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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

7/ It travels through letters, protests, campaigns, hunger strikes, political symbols, and shared resistance. Prisons are designed to isolate. Yet again and again, prisoners have found ways to communicate, organise, and struggle together across borders.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

6/ From Ireland, South Africa, Kurdistan, Palestine, Britain, the United States, and Cuba to struggles elsewhere around the world, prison resistance has never been confined to one place alone.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

5/ My latest article conceptualises this as “transnational prison solidarity” - the ways imprisoned people and their supporters build political, emotional, and collective connections across national boundaries.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

4/ These stories raise an important question: how do prisoners maintain solidarity with one another across thousands of miles, despite walls, borders, censorship, and isolation?

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

3/ One message came from Palestinian political prisoners in Israel’s Nafha Prison in the Negev Desert. Written on a scrap of paper, it was secretly smuggled out of prison, carried across borders, and eventually smuggled into Davis’s prison cell in New York.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

2/ While imprisoned in New York, Angela Davis described receiving hundreds of letters each day - many from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and beyond. Even prisoners in other countries tried to smuggle letters of solidarity to her cell.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

1/ In 1970, Angela Davis became the focus of a global movement demanding her release. Supporters organised protests, fundraising campaigns, petitions, songs, and “Free Angela Davis” buttons across the world.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

My research on resilience: 1. studentreview.hks.harvard.edu/the-dehumani... 2. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/ja... 3. academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic...

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

We urgently need immediate global action and a concerted effort to resist all forms of oppression, addressing the root causes of injustice. It is essential to organise, raise our voices, write, and, most importantly, educate to bring an end to all forms of injustice.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Resilience expectations can absolve the international community of its moral obligation to act against injustice. If violence goes unchallenged, it will persist unchecked.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

We are not models of endurance; romanticising our situation diminishes our humanity and downplays the severity of Israeli violence, while also neglecting the structural violence we face daily.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

It's important to move away from the notion that Palestinians possess some supernatural ability to cope. The reality is starkly different from the idealised image of 'resilient' Palestinians.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

My research builds on questions I am often asked that expect me resilience: ‘How are you still coping?’ The reality is: I am struggling to cope. And I should not be expected to cope.

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Malaka Shwaikh @mshwaikh.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

I am doing a university task and just saw my research on resilience has been quoted widely, including several times by the United Nations and in recent official reports, including from the State of Jersey.

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Reposted by Malaka Shwaikh

Jasmine K Gani @jasminekgani.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

"As the slow and expensive work of rebuilding Gaza begins – the UN estimates that it will take $50 billion and at least a decade – education should be among the priorities." 'Education is Resistance' by @mshwaikh.bsky.social in @londonreview.bsky.social www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/fe...

lrb.co.uk

Malaka Shwaikh | Education is resistance

Last month, my sister, her husband and their three children returned to their damaged flat in northern Gaza after...

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