Crips for eSIMs for Gaza: A Lunar New Year Update

Crips for eSIMs for Gaza: A Lunar New Year Update

Year of the Snake Means Transformation

 

 

After 470 days and 76 years of genocide, Gaza finally has a (temporary) ceasefire. Here at Crips for eSIMs for Gaza, we are sitting in awe and shock. At the steadfastness of Gazan people and Palestinians around the world. And at the sheer horror and mass brutality Palestinians have borne from the Israeli occupation. 

As Writers Against the War on Gaza recently wrote, “Every Palestinian in Gaza is a survivor, not only of the past 15 months of genocidal aggression, but of successive massacres, incursions, and sieges extending back to 1948. For 76 long years, the Zionist occupation has mangled and obliterated Palestinian family trees, land, and memory. Yet the struggle for liberation continues, with Gaza at its beating center.”

We have also been steadfast as we can be—in a disabled way. For over a year, we have sent eSIMs every day, from our bed, from the toilet, in the hospital, while waiting for the bus. With over 160+ volunteers, we have sent over 18,000 eSIMs and kept several thousand active continuously, some for over half a year, totalling more than 41,000 eSIMs and top ups. Thanks to all of your donations, we raised over two million dollars CAD and spent over two million dollars CAD on a rough estimate of 600,000 gigabytes of data, in support of Connecting Humanity and Gazans on the ground.  

Our work is not over. Gazans are returning to a devastated land. Entire neighborhoods are rubble on rubble. Local cell towers will take months to repair, meaning people will continue to rely on eSIMs for wifi and service: to study for their high school and university exams, to report on conditions on the ground, to contact their family members, to receive aid, to fundraise for their families. Volunteers are reporting faster usage on their eSIMs. 

With keeping eSIMs active for this long, and Canadian-US exchange rate at a disadvantage due to, among other reasons, the Trump candidacy, our spending has ballooned while donations have dropped.

As a result, we are currently several thousand dollars in the negatives, and need to raise at least $42K CAD to comfortably send new eSIMs to Gazans again. We have been eager to keep all our active eSIMs going, especially users who use 10GB or more a day, knowing one single eSIM can power a whole family or apartment, and knowing how dangerous it is to activate a new one in elevated locations. The genocide in Gaza is far from over, it has – as Bisan Owda and many others point out – simply slowed down. Until the local Internet infrastructure is safely restored, we will keep our eSIMs active and send new ones when we have the funds to do so.  

As Palestinian writer Jehad Abusalim observes, “The real fight…doesn’t end with a ceasefire.” It will take years to rebuild Gaza. Now is not the time to abandon the struggle or waver in our solidarity. 

Times are tough for everyone: with wildfires in LA poisoning the air, and a blatantly fascist government in office in the United States threatening tariffs against other countries, unleashing ICE onto migrants, obliterating health research, and imposing the colonial and transphobic gender binary, among many other brutal assaults. These are times that disabled people have been warning the world about and we are tired, terrified. And—to quote writer and activist Miss Major—“still fucking here!” and fighting. 

We send this post on Lunar New Year, the Year of the Wood Snake. This year is said to bring growth, transformation, and contemplation. Snakes are tricksters, feared by much of the west, but full of wisdom that comes from always changing. As we slither into a new year, we reflect on the old skins we are shedding to emerge anew. We will harness the power of the snake to keep transforming and growing our work to fight in solidarity with Palestine until the day Palestine is free.

To kick off the new year, we are offering: 

A signed copy of echolalia echolalia by Jane Shi, The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarinha, or Disability Intimacy by Alice Wong for every $100 donation. Email a copy of your receipt and specify which book you would like to cripsforesimsforgaza@gmail.com.

Thanks to the work of one of our volunteers and a few others (tofurocks, -hexcavator-, Barabones), there will soon be an Itch Bundle of games, comics/zines/books, TTRPGs, and more, via an Itch bundle. For folks who would like to submit something, you can check out their submissions page here, and later, to purchase from the bundle.

-hexcavator-’s Any Sands game is available now with proceeds to our fundraiser, as well as the “Mandatory Liberation Vol. 1” album compilation from New York City-based labels Gold Bolus Recordings and Strategy of Tension. Thank you to everyone who has been helping us fundraise from all over the world! 

Gaza Funds recently posted, “It’s not lost on us that the most steadfast supporters of our people in the west belong to the most oppressed class: the disabled. Despite their own struggles they did the impossible & saved countless lives. We recognize them today because we know what it is to love & honor our people, especially our disabled loved ones. We Palestinians will never forget this honorable work done by these most honorable people. What an example they have set! What will you say you did for Palestine?” We are humbled and honored to do this work. And when at liberation, and at the end of our lives, we are asked what we did for Palestine, we will be able to say—with all of you—we threw the fuck down with everything we had to save Gazan lives.

Let’s keep going for freedom. We have nothing to lose and every single thing to win.

 

Til victory.

 

Alice, Jane, and Leah

 

新年快乐!! / 新年快樂!!