"We Can’t Arrest Our Way to Liberation"

I named the shop Nabala Cafe as a tribute to my ancestral home in Palestine, Bayt Nabala, a village that was destroyed during the Nakba in 1948. Three thousand villagers (called ​“Nabalis”) mostly fled east towards Ramallah. As Israel occupied more and more Palestinian land over time, Nabalis continued to be displaced. Some stayed in Palestine or across the eastern border in Jordan, but we’ve all been forced to find homes in different parts of the world.

Chicago is home to the largest population of Palestinians in the United States, and we have a strong community of hundreds of Nabalis living in the area. The concept of Nabala Cafe started here, building on the deep community roots of Nabalis that have remained strong over decades, all centering our home of Bayt Nabala.

For years I felt dejected and disconnected from the world, spending my time and energy in corporate sales. Each day I was pushing consumer data to companies who would leverage it for financial gain while irreparably damaging the communities and environments they exploited. During that time, the most rewarding aspects of my life were a long way from the office. They were in Uptown where I’d spend much of my free time connecting with community members and providing food, water and resources to unhoused neighbors.

But this was never enough. There was always more to do in the community — more time needed to build relationships, more space needed to share skills and develop a well-rounded community, and more energy needed to develop sustainable mutual aid networks and broader social movements.

But instead I was spending most of my time and energy downtown, empowering the consumerism of the Loop and all of the global corporate entities with deep ties to Chicago’s business sector.

Nabala Cafe was a way to address this problem — shifting my time and energy to my community, with hopes of adding support, capacity, nourishment and care. With some encouragement from loved ones, I started the project in earnest in 2022. About two years later I was finally putting up our decorations honoring Palestine and opening the doors to the public.

Palestinians and Palestinian businesses have been frequent targets since the genocide in Gaza began. When we opened, we thought that it would only be a matter of time before someone attacked us. And on a recent evening, someone smashed the window where we displayed our flag.

At least two other nearby businesses, the bookstore Women & Children First and the clothing store Naaz Studios, were also attacked in recent months in similar ways. And as we know all too well, attacks on businesses that support Palestinian liberation are just a small slice of the overall violence we have seen over the past year.

There have been evictions handed out to residents displaying Palestinian flags on their apartments and employments terminated for the simple act of wearing a keffiyeh. Three college students who were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs were shot in Vermont. A woman attempted to drown a 3-year-old Palestinian girl in Texas. And right here in the Chicago area, 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume was violently murdered in October 2023.

It’s not just the murderers and vandals attacking Palestinians. It’s the police too. So many cops have ties to white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and so many police departments have had training exchange programs with the Israeli Occupation Forces — the same forces who have likely murdered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in the last year alone.

It’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is calling and trying to intimidate Palestinian activists like In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi. The same FBI and federal authorities who have taken Palestinians away from their families with horrifying regularity since September 11, 2001.

So for those of us who have been attacked in these various ways, questions we hold are: What can justice look like when anti-Palestinian racism is so deeply embedded and so violent? How are we supposed to respond? How can we focus on continuing to build community and relationships and not resign ourselves to searching for solutions from those who are explicitly oppressing, surveilling and attacking us?

After our window was broken, many people suggested involving police — but for what exactly? Consider the hypocrisy of collaborating with law enforcement that enacts such violence of its own. And even if the person who smashed our window was arrested and jailed, and even if the U.S. carceral system was somehow — in some alternate universe — a truly rehabilitative force, there are still too many people empowered by genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians and deeply indoctrinated by Zionist propaganda. 

But there is one thing I know for certain: We can’t arrest our way to liberation and we can’t jail our way to community.

Instead of turning to police, we turned to what Nabala Cafe is all about: community. As soon as word got out about the attack, our community came through to support us. We raised more than 10 times the money we needed to replace the broken window in less than 24 hours. Our business flourished in a way that we could not have ever imagined, and people got to work immediately beautifying our space, including painting a mural on our boarded-up window and covering the sidewalk with chalk artwork.

Our community was there with love and care when we needed it. But I also know we’re lucky and benefit from Palestine currently being the center of so many discussions. One thing I couldn’t help thinking about during all of this is what I would have done if our community hadn’t shown up, or if I was somewhere else and didn’t have the support we have here. That is the reality for so many others. 

The stress and fear that I felt the moment I found out about the broken window was paralyzing. The only thing I could think to do was let people know what happened and call the insurance company. I didn’t even think to sweep up the glass until a friend came by with a broom. And I didn’t even consider that we’d need to board up the window until another friend reached out and offered to do it.

So many businesses and individuals who experience a violating attack like this are not met with even a fraction of the support that we received. Often, they are completely alone.

How can we fault these folks for mobilizing police and the carceral system when they have no one else to turn to? Even if they would prefer a different course of action, their fears and stresses are valid, the violence is real and present and, for businesses similar to ours, the threat to so many people’s livelihoods is palpable and frightening.

It’s our duty to show up for our communities in every way possible, because when we do not show up, that void is taken by police. I hope that one of the lessons we can take away from the attack on Nabala Cafe is that we need to make a collective effort to serve and support one another, so that relying on police for anything is a non-starter. We’re better off without them.

And police seem to always make that calculation for us. When I arrived at the cafe to deal with the broken window, it was about 7 a.m., more than seven hours after the window was broken. Police were on the scene overnight, and their biggest accomplishment was using police tape to hang a black garbage bag over the wide open window. 

When I called them to file a report in the morning (unfortunately required for insurance claims), they absurdly asked me what happened. I had just arrived, how would I have known? Then, when I asked them what happened, and what had occurred while they were there overnight, they said they didn’t know and that they didn’t document anything because ​“there was no victim present.” They didn’t say anything about considering it a targeted attack and just handed me a piece of paper reading ​“criminal damage to property” and that included a report number. That was that and I haven’t heard from them since.

Good riddance. The police do not care. But our communities do, and we need to get better at showing that care to one another in our day-to-day lives.

It’s of course challenging because so many of us are putting our time and energy into making a living that also unfortunately benefits the ruling class; we have limited free time, so showing up for community becomes that much more difficult.

But the fundamental question is how we can continue to use our collective power to build community strength — and we do have some key examples to draw from.

One surrounds a Palestinian woman who faces eviction in Logan Square for hanging a Palestinian flag outside her apartment, and who has courageously left it hanging through a time-consuming legal battle. An incredible community formed around her — a true multiracial and religiously diverse community (including both Palestinians and Jews) — who protested, created artwork, and planned many different events in support of her and in service of free expression. It’s been nearly a year and this community is stronger than ever.

Another surrounds the firing of a woman who was wearing a keffiyeh at her job at an Apple store in Lincoln Park. The way the staff at the store advocated and fought for her was so inspirational, and months later so many of these folks are embedded in more supportive and impactful community spaces.

These are small, but courageous acts. But that’s what we need right now, and that’s how we can protect each other, keep each other safe, and build community together.

And our actions don’t even need to be courageous to have an impact. It can be as simple as striking up conversations with neighbors and community members we’ve never met, or those that we continue to be in relationship and friendship with. Ultimately we need to consistently show up for one another on a massive scale, but there’s no telling what small acts can bring.

I’m incredibly grateful for our community, and more proud of Nabala Cafe than ever. I’m more optimistic than ever that it can be a space of connection and bonding, of love and nourishment.

Because we can’t arrest our way to liberation, we can only get there by building together.