Refaat People’s Library
I sit down here again. This time, a week later. This time my bare feet on the grass. This time my bare face exposed to the sun. This time there is no tent to shelter me. No tent filled with the books we brought into the Refaat People’s Library. This time there is no more encampment for me to feel safe under the white man’s institution that this university is. I only see the 14’ x 9’ plot that left a mark on the quad.
Like every project that started in the Liberated Zone, the Rafaat People’s Library was built by many people without a linear or hierarchical process. I began taking part in the library when someone approached the tent I was staying which was right beside the Art Community Space. It is worth mentioning that the Art Community Space began from the efforts of a group I have been part of—now called UW Educators for Liberation. The first day we set camp, we were brought a white sheet to paint on a sign that would name the library project. Those who were painting signs in the art community space seemed perplexed to even touch a white blank sheet. Thankfully, a week before I had been tasked by my Falastiniyat friends to take on a white sheet and create political art from it. I was glad to have had the experience of feeling the fear of messing up a perfectly white canvas for the potential of something radical. Because of this, I had learned how to take artistic risks to make a sign for the Palestinian Nakba Day protest. So this time around, I took over the challenge with much less fear and began drafting a sign that read “LIBERATION LIBRARY”.
I have to be honest. I wish I had made a sign that read “REFAAT PEOPLE’S LIBRARY”. But as we know, autonomous movements usually are not as individually directive as we are used to under educational institutions. So I had to come up with something, anything, to make sure my perfectionist fears did not paralyze me. So I wrote the two words I knew would, at the very least, represent our new library. Although I wish I could have come up with a better name, I do not regret taking initiative over the sign that we ended up putting on the 14’ x 9’ tent. I do not regret it because, as my anarchist friends and experiences have taught me, all decisions, even the less desired ones, are part of the process of collective work. The next day, my friends from Mutual Aid Books, brought in a few dozen books that center abolitionist, Palestinian and BIPOC writers. Soon after my partner, my two new friends and I put up the sign over the library tent, people began adding their own signs of what they wished the library could be named. My favorite name given to the library was Refaat People’s Library, in honor of recently martyred professor and poet Refaat Alareer.
This is what I think anarchist education is about, a process of trial and error that leads to collective and horizontal participation where everyone involved in the community takes part in naming the work for liberation. This type of education, an education that rejects and lives outside of the institution and non-profit sector, is what I would call an anarchist education. This type of education positions itself against oppressive educational systems that work to silence our revolution, today: the student intifada.
Today, as I mourn the end of the Liberated Zone on my campus, I hold the pain of letting go of our unfinished projects, but I also hold the joy of remembering that I witnessed what autonomous education can look like. It has been an honor to hold hands with my Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, Black, Brown, Indigenous, Muslim, and (un)documented immigrant classmates. I thank our ancestors for resisting their own genocide and for uniting us here.
