When the Poem is a Spreadsheet: Joining Crips for eSims for Gaza in #ConnectingGaza
When the Poem is a Spreadsheet: Joining Crips for eSims for Gaza in #ConnectingGaza
Jane Shi
FYI: Plain language version of “Crips for eSims for Gaza: A Donation Guide” by Noemí Martínez Turull
Disparate Parts
As a kid, I grew up listening to my parents bicker in the hallway about C++ and Sql Server. Like many Chinese diasporic families, my parents wanted me to join the family small business, or at least, stay in the same field, which meant software engineering, computer science, or some other field in STEM. In a first-year humanities program at my alma mater, I learned about J. Robert Oppenheimer, and when I brought home some of these books, my mother took them into her room and read them, exclaiming, “Aah, they’re making you all hate science for some reason.”
My mother is from a generation of cultural reform, the aftermath of June 4th, of thousands of workers and students fighting tanks with grocery bags and a defiance against factory bosses and injustice. Students were encouraged to go into STEM, to learn technical fields, to mold themselves into something “useful” to the economy, to chase the breakneck of the country until their joints faltered against blue and white collars, until their only-children fled their family nests to tentatively, and then surely, build their own. After many student leaders were blacklisted for their participation in the Tiananmen protests, Canada’s points system offered some in their generation clean air and blue skies and fresh beginnings—settler colonial lies that cherry picked immigrant workers whose intellectual and technological labour could be acquired more cheaply in a coastal city, such as in so-called Vancouver, that reminded them of a time when oceans were not polluted. Factory workers, migrant care workers, displaced villagers, disabled people who panhandle at night on the subways: families like mine have been, for decades, incentivized and pressured to seek out upward mobility on other people’s lands.
When the heat wave of 2021 in British Columbia killed over six hundred people, predominantly poor, disabled, and elderly folks, I thought about my grandpa who worked into his 90s to build air conditioners across Asia, both east and west. How such work has no demand in North American cities that refuse to face the climate consequences of their colonial occupation of Indigenous lands.
Engineers in Gaza do not have the luxury of clean air and blue skies and fresh beginnings; Israeli bombs kill them for doing their jobs, for restoring the Internet that the same bombs continue to cut off. Poets in Gaza do not have the luxury of lakeside residencies; they are assassinated and kidnapped and tortured for speaking truth and liberation.
If poets and engineers have something in common, it’s that we build things out of disparate parts. Find the most efficient use of language or machines or technology so we can live. If poets and engineers have something in common, it’s that we are also used to aid and abet genocide; professions and vocations do not, inherently, offer an umbrella of solidarity, just as individualized disabled identities, often if not exclusively rooted in western medical models of diagnosis, don’t either.
The Speaker of My Poems are Also Sending eSims to Gaza
The eSim apps that Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasina, Alice Wong and I, alongside over 130 volunteers, have been using to connect Palestinians in Gaza to the Internet since October are designed for tourism. On one app, a birds-eye view photograph of a luxurious beach advertises their products for spring break getaways. The subject heading of a marketing email of another eSim company reads, “Are your buddies out of data?” Our buddies in Palestine are facing a genocide and companies are profitting off of it.
In “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide,” Fargo Nissim Tbakhi observes, as Noor Hindi has so incisively done as well in her poem “Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying,” that “[c]raft success is contingent upon ethical and political failures”:
If, as Audre Lorde taught us, the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house, then Craft is the process by which our own real liberatory tools are dulled, confiscated, and replaced. We believe our words sharper than they turn out to be. We play with toy hammers and think we can break down concrete. We think a spoon is a saw.
Disabled people in the west rely on and sometimes do not question the reality that the tools of the oppressor are also tools we need to survive and navigate society, whether it is through Israeli medical supplies (i.e., Pfizer vaccines, 3M, Enovid nasal spray for COVID) or relying on big tech for accessibility tools. In many cases, we can boycott and divest, and in others, we must ask abled people in our lives to take on risks we cannot. But increasingly, as the genocide in Gaza continues unabated with our western tax dollars and with unyielding fervour and cruelty, such “can”s and “must”s morph into less clean-cut edges, shapes, and borders.
Take, for instance, Victor I. Cazares’ strike from their HIV medications until New York Theatre Workshop calls for a ceasefire: poignantly, they assert, “HIV has always been a part of my presence. So it became inevitable it would then become a protest.”
Take, for instance, the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, who many were quick to claim as “not mentally ill,” but whose friends affirmed was traumatized from camouflaging neurodivergence throughout a childhood of surviving an abusive religious cult.
Take Disability Divest, in which disabled people are demanding that disability organizations divest from war profiteering and genocide.
Such acts of disabled protest invite us to consider what we are or aren’t willing to do to stop a genocide. In what ways can disabled people use our experiences for protest, for refusal? In what ways can we demand that the medical supplies we need to survive are not complicit in genocide, occupation, and apartheid? And build a world in which our interdependence is interdependence for all?
Mass disabling events, including the vaccine apartheid in Palestine and other parts of the global south, the medical and military industrial complex, and settler colonialism are deeply interwoven. To say things are interwoven is to say that, by design and with intention, disparate parts were crafted and fashioned together into something else. What’s interwoven can, by design and with intention, be unraveled, destroyed, and refashioned. Medicine, care, technology, science, engineering, design are tools, for good and for empire, just as literature, poetry, art are tools, for good and for empire.
In “Palestinian Poets on the Role of Literature in Fighting Genocide,” Priscilla Washington beautifully puts, “No matter how much we may repeat the metaphor, poetry is not water. It cannot write the bombs out of the sky. It cannot put back together the bodies of a loved one, or build a safe place for even a mouse to sleep in Gaza. But this is not to say that poetry or words in general are useless in a time of genocide.”
What Fargo argues about craft reminds me of the fact that when I write for the public, I feel a responsibility to write hopefully, to imagine that the words I use can be useful to someone. Prisoners can use spoons to break out of jail, and the responsibility of a writer is also to be precise and clear about what our spoons do, what we do with the spoons we have.
Mirna El Helbawi of #ConnectingGaza, Alice, Leah and I are all writers. And yet we are not writing as if business is usual. Vocations do not predetermine how we respond to a moment, an hour, but I do believe that our work as writers gives us the insight, tools, and bravery to try things we haven’t done before.
If we choose to be the kind of poets, the kind of engineers, the kind of people who fight for life, rather than propagandists or foot soldiers for empire, then we must use all the tools at our disposal to stop the genocides and colonial violence in Palestine, in Congo, in Sudan, in Haiti, in Dzungarstan and Altishahr, in West Papua, on Turtle Island, and so on. We must ensure that our tools are as sharp as a saw, or as the late poet Refaat Alareer offered, an expo marker. And those tools include our refusals.
We need all of us, which is why, week after week, Alice, Leah, and myself have been calling on disabled people everywhere (and indeed, according to Paypal – from at least forty-four countries so far) to help us send eSims to Gaza. Below is a call to action with different ways you can join us and get involved.
We must use our skills, learn new skills, and as Mosab Abu Toha says, be “real poets who can together write a single poem that stops this genocide.”
We must all fight so Palestinians in Gaza, and oppressed people everywhere, may live.
About
Jane Shi lives on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Her writing has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, The Offing, Canthius, Room Magazine, and Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press), among others. She is the author of the forthcoming debut poetry collection echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024). Find her on social media @pipagaopoetry or topping up eSims in a socially stressful situation. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.
A Call to Action: Joining Us in #ConnectingGaza
When Alice and Leah reached out to me about organizing Crips for eSims for Gaza, I was enthusiastic. I also had no idea that we would raise over $831K Canadian Dollars (well over half a million USD), an amount I have never seen in one place in my life.
Wilder still is the fact that we were able to spend over 98% of these funds since the end of 2023, something that couldn’t have happened without the support of 140 friends and community members. What this means, in practice, is that our project has been able to connect thousands of people in Gaza to the Internet, adding to efforts to connect Gaza around the world.
Some of our eSims have been topped up since January, meaning Palestinians have been able to receive continuous Internet access for more than two months despite the ongoing and targeted telecommunication blackouts.
Mirna and the Connecting Humanity team have shared that they were able to connect a journalist just a few hours before they covered the horrific Flour Massacre (and subsequent ones); hospitals that provide life-saving services for people injured and sick; students who are still continuing their studies when their schools were destroyed; families so they can let their loved ones know how they’re doing. Sometimes, one eSim is hotspotted between dozens of people nearby. Some of our eSims were used by journalists covering massacres at Al Shifa hospital. Our eSims are allowing students in Gaza to continue their studies despite all universities being destroyed.
Recently, Mirna shared on Instagram that the Connecting Project may need to end due to a lack of eSim donations. We cannot let this happen.
On behalf of Crips for eSims for Gaza, I am sharing the following how-to guide, including steps to join us in using our funds to send eSims to people in Gaza with the funds we raised. You too, can send eSims to Palestinians in Gaza, at no cost to yourself and with just your energy and time. Our goal is to send at least 500 eSims a week.
None of Us Are Powerless
Organizing Crips for eSims for Gaza alongside Alice and Leah has helped me relearn and affirm the idea that none of us are spectators to liberation. There is something about staring at a large spreadsheet, each active eSim being used by a person, a family, or hotspotted by dozens, and tallying up the donations from nearly ten thousand people from forty four countries, that offers clarity and assurance amidst unspeakable grief and devastation. Sending eSims from bed, troubleshooting add-ons, asking your friends who work in tech for jargon to send to an eSim company, teaching fellow poets how to send eSims, infodumping new information about each app on social media–all of these are strategies of disabled organizing that we learn because we have to.
So many years into a pandemic that has wholesale abandoned disabled people has stunned me, at times, into a sense of isolation so thunderous that it has been difficult to imagine myself part of movements for real, or really part of anything, for real. This isn’t just about a lack of access or accommodations in non-disabled movement spaces, it’s a spiritual sense of isolation and alienation designed to make us disabled people, particularly those of us who are racialized and queer, feel like we are not part of the world. Nonetheless, this sense of being an outsider is key to so much wisdom and internal capacity to act in solidarity with others.
When Rasha Abdulhadi calls on us to get in the way, I consider too the importance of getting out of our own way: materially and literally, none of us are powerless. Students setting up encampments at universities around the world, prisoners donating their week of wages in solidarity with Palestinians, principled people blocking railways and weapons manufacturing, writers demanding that literary awards are not direct participants in genocide and dropping their book from such awards, mutual aid and fundraising projects like Gaza Funds, Workshops4Gaza, the Refaat Mobile Library, Palestine Asdiqa, Operation Olive Branch, and so on: we all have a role to play.
As someone who has a hard time resting (cue all my friends slow-clapping in the background), this article is also my way of saying, “Help!”
There is so much more to do, but I’m grateful that disabled people from around the world can show up for Palestinians in an easy, accessible, and tangible way. The section below outlines one way to help.
Joining from Canada (preferred to save on Paypal fees)
- Send your first eSim to gazaesims@gmail.com (with your QR code, activation code, expiry date, etc. For details, see “Steps for Sending an eSim” below.) and BCC cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com. Remember: there’s an “s” at the end of gazaesims@gmail.com!
- Send an email to cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com sharing the receipt (with date of purchase) for the eSim you just sent. Your email should also include your e-transfer email or Vancity relationship number. Make sure the email is sent for eSims purchased after reading this article.
- We will then email you with info about next steps.
- Continue to BCC your QR code emails gazaesims@gmail.com to cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com until you hit a dollar/currency amount you’re comfortable holding between a day to a week. Sending multiple eSims and then sending us one receipt with an amount greater than $200 reduces the number of reimbursement transfers we need to do but it is totally okay to just send one eSim.
- Reimbursements may take between a day to a week given e-transfer limits, how many people need to be reimbursed, and personal capacity. Please share how quickly you need to be reimbursed so you can be prioritized!
Joining elsewhere
- Repeat the above steps, but send cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com your Paypal info. If you do not have Paypal but have Venmo/Cashapp/Zelle, buddy up with someone who does and they can send you funds through these formats!
- Please send receipts in larger increments (but under $600USD for folks in the States, to avoid filling out a tax form and running into issues) to reduce transaction fees. Please research limits in your region so everything goes as smoothly as possible! Reimbursements may take between a day to a week pending personal capacity and volume
Note: other methods of payment can be discussed after sending your initial eSim! Paypal is currently the most time-efficient method for those outside of Canada.
How to send eSims to Palestinians in Gaza
The following tutorial adds to tutorials that already exist at:
https://www.esimdonorsforgaza.org/
Steps for Sending an eSim
- Purchase eSim via desktop or mobile (see below for detailed instructions on purchasing from different providers)
- Take a clear screenshot of the QR code. This means that the image of the QR code itself should be large.
- Attach the QR code to your email to gazaesims@gmail.com. Remember the “s” at the end of “gazaesims”!
- Copy/paste the eSim’s activation code, ICCID, or item ID into the email for ease of tracking.
- Include in subject/body of email: Provider, size of data, expiry date (when relevant), whether you’ll top up your eSim, and also “Crips for eSims for Gaza.” E.g. “Nomad 10GB Middle East August 10th expiry, top up (Crips for eSims for Gaza”
- Send one eSim per email.
Important note: do not scan and activate the eSim on your phone!
Nomad
Regions: Middle East
Preferred sizes: 3GB and over, top up using 10GB once eSim is active
Interface:
- available via mobile app and desktop
- Accessing multiple eSims involves scrolling page-by-page, as in, a handful of eSims appear on screen at a time.
QR Code: arrives in your email or is inside the app when you click “How to use” and then “Install your eSim” and then “Scan QR Code.”
Tracking tips: include in your email the eSim’s expiry date, activation code, and order number, which can be found at the bottom of your email when it arrives in your inbox. The ICCID is also helpful for you to visit web pages for individual eSims on the desktop application. The URL for an individual eSim is https://www.getnomad.app/esim/%5BICCID number].
Payment: Multiple currencies available, Paypal, credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay
Discounts: On Tuesdays, the desktop website has a 10% discount on eSims for 10GB and over (not available via the mobile app) with promo code NOMADTUE. There is also the promo code NomadCNG (5% discount – can be used up to 50 times per account). Typically, promo codes cannot be used to purchase top-ups.
We have found Nomad eSim to be the most frequently activated eSim and also the most time-consuming to track and top-up.
Top ups: Nomad will notify you once your eSim has used 60% and 80% of its data, but these notifications are only helpful when you haven’t already topped up your eSim. I usually top up my Nomad eSim as soon as it’s surpassed 1GB used to save myself time and to avoid an eSim being used up when I’m asleep or away from my keyboard.
Note: Nomad is currently going through a few platform issues. We will soon have a simpler method of purchasing Nomad eSims, so in the meantime, get a few Nomad and more Simly and Airalo eSims given demand from the #ConnectingGaza project.
Simly
Interfaces:
- Only available on mobile app
- Seems to work best on iOS
- Continuous scroll of all eSims purchased
Regions: Palestine (90 days), Middle East (30 days)
QR Code: inside the app per eSim when you click “Install” and then the “QR Code” in the middle tab.
Tracking tips: Once you’ve purchased an eSim, click on the “Install” button, and then click on the three dots at the top right. There you will find the eSIM’s ICCID Number. You can also click on the “Manual” tab on the right and copy-paste the activation code in your original email (rather than doing a screenshot) so you can easily search up the eSim that corresponds to which email.
Payment: USD currency only; Credit Card, Apple Pay
Top-up: Once you’ve purchased an eSim, and the eSim becomes activated (respectively, the orange circle for Palestine and the gray circle for the Middle East one will turn green), you can click on the “top up” button on the left. Unfortunately sometimes top ups don’t go through, after which you can request a refund via customer support.
Discounts: ARB (25% off, sometimes doesn’t work but worth trying), referral bonuses, e.g. JANEJFA3, F07107375679, and FREEELT1 (multiple-uses).
Airalo
Regions: Global (Discover)
Preferred sizes: 5GB and over, auto renewal can be turned on so it won’t run out (only works with a credit card)
QR Code: Inside each eSim when you go to “my eSIMS,” then “Package Details,” then “View Instructions,” and then the third tab, “QR Code.”
Interface:
- available on mobile app and desktop
- Continuous scroll
- Customer service chat within app
- Expired or invalid eSims can be archived
Tracking tips: copy-paste the ICCID number at the top of each eSim in your original email
Payment: credit card, debit card, Paypal; variety of currencies
Discounts: SAVOO10 , AIRALOMAY10, MK10 , WETHRIFT, LATIMES10, SZ10 all 10% off (multiple use)
Top ups: Manual top-ups can be various sizes, discounts work for them; auto-renewal means you don’t need to check and collects points
Note: Hotspotting is available for these eSims, meaning people in Gaza can share this eSim with their family and neighbours or use it on another device.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why do you need more people to help purchase eSims?
Buying and sending eSims isn’t exactly like bulk ordering supplies and loading them into a truck. It requires continuous monitoring, as well as data on one’s computer and phone to store, load, and add more data.
If we were buying eSims for ourselves for travel, we would be checking on the status of our own data, but because we are purchasing for users in Gaza who do not have access to our account, we need to take a leap of faith and observe each users’ usage patterns. In some cases, we can contact customer support to ask when our eSim has been used, and in others, we can observe how much it’s used and keep adding data. Unfortunately, sometimes eSims don’t show up as being used even if they are.
A handful of people can’t feasibly buy and monitor thousands of eSims, so it is best to have more people help out to buy and monitor a manageable number of eSims over time.
This is especially the case with eSim apps with less robust interfaces, where too many eSims in one account would cause glitches.
2. How do credit card companies respond to my eSim purchases?
Credit cards’ fraud alert system would usually ding multiple eSim purchases as unusual or fraudulent, so space out purchases if you’re planning on using your credit card, and let your credit card company know that they should expect bulk purchases. What usually helps avoid credit card fraud alert detection is buying eSims of the same price consistently. Using Paypal or debit cards avoids this issue.
3. Which of the eSim apps would be best for me to start with?
If you do not have a lot of time, purchase a handful of 90 day eSims from Holafly (though #ConnectingGaza currently has enough of them). Airalo Discover allows for auto-renewal, and also has the most user-friendly interface. If you only have an iPhone but not a laptop, Simly is mobile only and uses Apple Pay or credit card only. Nomad is the most time-consuming eSIM to monitor, as their app currently does not include continuous scroll and top-ups have to be in increments of 10GB or less when the eSim is already active.
4. I am disabled and/or not tech savvy. What are some of the barriers to entry I can anticipate?
eSim apps may not be straightforward to use for screen reader users. Screen-usage is also fairly high in this work, and so is keyboard- and phone-use, which can be hard on some people’s wrists/hands.
If joining us in this process is inaccessible for you, you can still donate to us and help us spread the word:
https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza
E-transfer: cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com (autodeposit on)
We are currently using spreadsheets, email, google docs, and Discord to communicate.
It may take a few weeks for group tutorials to be organized, but Jane and others may be able to offer one-on-one walkthroughs of the process and general chat support via Discord. We have video tutorials as well as text instructions! If after reading the above instructions, you would like more support before purchasing your first eSim, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com.
So far, it seems to be that iPhones and desktop browsers (on a laptop or desktop computer) offer the most capacity to purchase and monitor eSims. Purchasing via Desktop means that you do not have to rely on limited storage on your phone to do so!
5. How quickly can I be reimbursed for my eSim purchases?
If you need an immediate reimbursement, please let us know at cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com. If you are otherwise okay with waiting for a bit, please expect 2 days to a week on average.
6. I can only receive cash reimbursements and/or don’t have any funds to float. Can I still participate?
Yes, if you are local to the lower mainland/Vancouver, BC and are okay with scheduling a specific time with Jane to pick up cash.
You can also help us with sending and monitoring Nomad eSims, as we recently acquired bulk-purchasing capacities, with the option of not spending any funds.
7. I cannot float funds and would prefer to receive lump sums. Is this possible?
Yes, though we prefer to do this with people we have a more direct social connection with for security reasons. Please request this if you know any of us personally or are friends with someone we are friends with. Thanks for understanding!
8. I have another question I’d like to ask the team about. Where can I reach you?
Please send queries to cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com. We may not be able to get back to you as quickly as we like on some queries, since our focus is to send out as many eSims as we can with the funds we have.
9. Do you distribute eSims to people in Gaza directly?
While we have sent eSims to those connected to a handful of people and groups in Gaza outside of the #ConnectingGaza project, we do not have the capacity to do extended tech support like those at Connecting Humanity and few of us know Arabic. We also do not always have enough people to respond to people in a timely manner, though we will not turn down anyone we are already connected to already.
Please continue to reach out to Connecting Humanity for eSims!
10. Connecting Humanity may have to shut down due to lack of eSims. How will you use the funds if that happens?
We hope they can continue for as long as possible with our collective support! We will still need funds to top up our currently active eSims. There are also other grassroots groups who are distributing eSims that we’re more than happy to support.
11. I cannot help with purchasing or donations but I’d like to help in other ways. What are some things you need help with?
- Spreading the word
- Translation (e.g. Punjabi, Arabic, plain language, ASL interpretation etc.)
- Image Descriptions and other access work
- Improving systems
- Outreach
- Other backend administrative work
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