OPINION | Why I Performed at the Palestine Will Live Forever Concert

I performed at Volunteer Park on Saturday at Palestine Will Live Forever: All of Us, Or None of Us, a showing of solidarity addressing the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

It was an honor to be part of an incredible lineup of artists and organizers whom I respect, admire, and am inspired by. The energy in the crowd was bright and uplifting. Thankfully, the weather agreed.

After breakfast in the Chinatown-International District with Bambu and DJ Phatrick, we mobbed over to the park. dead prez's "Hip-Hop" played on the booming sound system as we arrived, with fellow KEXP DJ Reverend Dollars onstage to open the festival. After checking in with the backstage crew, I walked around to soak in the atmosphere.

I saw familiar faces and friends like Derek Dizon of A Resting Place; Hollis Wong-Wear, who was operating live video production; folks I've come across at past shows I've performed at who I haven't seen in years. There seemed to be a consensus that, as beautiful as this scene was, as good as it felt to be here, it was not lost on us that across a continent and ocean away, the bombing and full-scale invasion of Gaza was intensifying. (Shortly after the festival concluded, we learned 53 Palestinians were killed, 16 more buildings destroyed.)

The event's theme was solidarity: that the suffering of the Palestinian people is deeply interconnected with the systems that have historically attacked and harmed us all. Settler colonialism, white supremacy, Zionism, racial capitalism. I was gifted a T-shirt from fellow performers The Neighborhood Kids, which expressed this theme in four words: Don't be a Colonizer. I had to rock it onstage.

For me, performing on this site, for this cause, was also personal. The same U.S. empire that fuels the Palestinian genocide casts a long shadow on my family's history. Near the water tower in Volunteer Park is a bronze plaque that most people pass without noticing. It reads: "In tribute to the volunteer services of Spanish-American war veterans who liberated the oppressed peoples of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands, April 1898–July 1902."

"Liberated." Nah, my ancestors were not liberated in 1898. They were occupied and faced a genocidal military campaign in the Philippine-American War, not very long after the Duwamish people of this land faced a similar fate. And here I was, onstage at a park named to honor the soldiers who did it all. Felt like history folding back on itself. On some level, defiantly telling our stories was a reclamation of this land, in all its contradictions, as a site of resistance.

My wife Chera, who is also Filipino and whose family shares the same history of survival as mine, arrived straight from our Hood Famous Bakeshop kitchen just in time to catch my set. I didn't know if she'd make it, as she was preparing food and coffee for organizers and volunteers, but she did. On September 13, 2003, we were married in front of a community of organizers, cultural workers, educators. It felt very appropriate to mark 22 years of our journey together at Saturday's event. Especially poetic: Gabriel Teodros, one of the main festival organizers, was at our wedding 22 years ago.

I said onstage that we were there for lives lost, but also for lives yet to be lived. We reminded ourselves and others that people, more than anything created by people (nations, borders, buildings, institutions), deserve to exist. Empires fall, but people endure, and our stories live forever in the spaces we create together to celebrate our struggles.

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Geo Quibuyen, who performs as Prometheus Brown, lives in Mount Baker. He is a Seattle MC and DJ at KEXP. Along with his wife, Chera Amlag, they founded and own the Hood Famous Bakeshop.