This Is How We Survive

In this volume, Mai'a Williams shares her experiences working in conflict zones and with liberatory resistance communities as a journalist, human rights worker, and midwife, while mothering her young daughter Aza. She first went to Palestine in 2003 to support Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation. In 2006, she became pregnant in Bethlehem, West Bank. By the time her daughter was three years old, they had already celebrated with Zapatista women in southern Mexico and survived Israeli detention, and during the 2011 Arab Spring they were in the streets of Cairo protesting the Mubarak dictatorship. She watched the Egyptian revolution fall apart and escaped the violence by moving to Europe. But three years later, she and Aza were camping at Standing Rock in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This is a story about Mai'a and other mothers who are doing the work of deep social transformation by creating the resilient networks of care that sustain movements and create revolutions.