Tag Archives: Solidarity

January 21, 2022
Just World podcast “The World From Palestine”!

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Dear Friends–

Happy Martin Luther King Day! I hope it finds you well.

This week, on Friday, Just World Ed will be launching our new podcast series, “The World From Palestine”. In each episode of this ten-week series the Palestinian scholar Yousef Aljamal and I will explore different aspects of the intersection between Palestine’s liberation struggle and other anti-imperialist struggles — throughout history, and until today.

The new podcast series will be available globally on Just World Podcasts and will also be available for streaming or download on Apple, Spotify, and all other major audio-streaming platforms.

I am particularly excited to work on this podcast with Yousef, given his wide experience of settler colonialisms in many parts of the world including Hawai’i, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Ireland, Algeria, in Palestine (of course!)… and here on Turtle Island.

In 2014 and 2019, he undertook speaking tours of the United States, speaking to super audiences and connecting with Palestinian-rights leaders and activists nationwide. In 2019, he also held good meetings with key members of the U.S. Congress and numerous congressional staffers.

Learn a little more about our new podcast project below…

In the meantime, I also want to tell you about another cutting-edge project that Code Pink is organizing and that Just World Ed is co-sponsoring. This is a webinar, “A Closer Look at China in Africa”, that will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, at 1pm ET.

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Join the #WetsuwetenResistance Pipeline Fight

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The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project supports the efforts of the Wet’suwet’en nation to exercise their rights as a sovereign nation to manage and protect their lands and waters. In particular, they have the right to disallow construction of the proposed TC Energy Coastal GasLink pipeline.

As advocates for human rights in Palestine, we see the struggle of the Wet’suwet’en nation as another face of the same colonial theft of land that has caused the Palestinian people to be deprived of basic human rights in their own country. We are especially appalled by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s repeated use of force against the Wer’suwet’en people, including the forced removal of Indigenous people from their land at gunpoint and the cruel and violent treatment of prisoners.

We call on the government of Canada to stop this violence against the Wet’suwet’en nation and to respect their sovereignty.

JOIN THE WET’SUWET’EN RESISTANCE 🔥
For the third time in three years, the Wet’suwet’en have faced militarized raids on our ancestral territory. One month ago today, the RCMP violently raided unceded Gidimt’en territory (Nov 18-19, 2021), removing Indigenous people from their land at gunpoint on behalf of TC Energy’s proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline.​​ The Wet’suwet’en enforced our standing eviction of CGL by closing roads into the territory November 14-17. Following the raids, arrestees received cruel and violent treatment in prison. The conditions set forth by the court are human rights violations to Indigenous peoples.

We call on all nations, allies, accomplices, and supporters everywhere to RISE UP in solidarity. We must employ all the collective strength in our hearts and minds to stop the machine of global empire that is destroying us. The time on the world clock is NOW to unify around our common goal as beings on this planet, to honor Indigenous sovereignty and put an end to end of history! We are in this fight for the long haul and we will not back down. This pipeline will never be built. Join the WET’SUWET’EN RESISTANCE!

Take Action:
🔥 Come to Camp yintahaccess.com/come-to-camp
🔥 DEC 20 WEEK OF ACTION TOOLKIT: https://bit.ly/3IYHKBR
🔥 Issue a solidarity statement from your organization or group. Email to: yintahaccess@gmail.com
🔥 Pressure the government, banks, and investors yintahaccess.com/take-action-1
🔥 Donate. https://www.yintahaccess.com/donate
🔥 Spread the word.

More information and developing stories:
Website: yintahaccess.com
Instagram: @yintah_access
Twitter: @Gidimten
Facebook: Gidimt’en Checkpoint
Youtube: Gidimten Access Point
TikTok: GidimtenCheckpoint

#WetsuwetenResistance #DivestCGL
#ShutDownCanada #WetsuwetenStrong #AllOutForWedzinKwa #ExpectUs
#indigenous #landback #decolonize #mmiw #mmiwg #waterprotectors #landdefenders #defundcgl #climateaction #wetsuweten #wetsuwetensolidarity #sovereignty #tierra #terre #resistance

Beauty pageant boycott

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Many South Africans see a boycott of the Miss Universe pageant in Israel as a chance to stand up for Palestinians and against injustice


Lalela Mswane walks across the stage during the Miss South Africa beauty pageant in Cape Town, South Africa on Oct. 16, 2021. AP

Ryan Lenora Brown, Christian Science Monitor, December 9, 2021

JOHANNESBURG — When Lalela Mswane glided across a Cape Town stage in a red satin ball gown at the finals of the Miss South Africa pageant in October, she moved with the poise of someone who commanded her country’s attention. 

But in the days after the 24-year-old law student and model was crowned, that gaze took on a sharp edge.

Pro-Palestine activists began demanding she boycott the Dec. 12 Miss Universe pageant because it will be held in Israel. In mid-November, the South African government withdrew its support for Ms. Mswane’s entry, so she will compete without her country’s backing.

“The atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians are well documented and Government, as the legitimate representative of the people of South Africa, cannot in good conscience associate itself with such,” wrote the Department of Sports, Arts, and Culture in a statement. The pageant organizers, meanwhile, soldiered on, stating that Ms. Mswane “would not be bullied” into boycotting the pageant. (The Miss South Africa organization and Ms. Mswane did not respond to requests for comments for this story.)

The Miss Universe competition may seem an unusual place for a government to stake a major geopolitical stand. But in South Africa, activists say the anti-apartheid movement taught them that the struggle against injustice takes place everywhere, from parliamentary debates and mass marches to boycotts of sports games, grapefruits, and yes, even the stage of a beauty pageant.  

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December 6, 2021
Webinar: “Teaching Hard Truths”

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Black and Palestinian Perspectives on
the Power of Education and Action

via Zoom

Who: Dr. Ronda Taylor Bullock, Co-Founder and Executive Director of we are (working to extend anti-racist education), and Dr. Iymen Chehade, History professor at Columbia College, Chicago, and human rights activist

When: December 6, 7:00 PM (Eastern Time Zone)

Dr. Chehade and Dr. Bullock, each from their distinctive perspectives, will share insights from their work in educating for a future of liberation and equity. They will explore the critical value of a structural analysis of oppression, whether that be systemic racism in the American context or systematic oppression in Palestine/Israel. In addition to naming what creates injustice, destruction, and death, they also dream and envision creative possibilities of the life that can be. Join us for an enlightening and inspiring conversation!

Register in advance for this meeting

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Escalating surveillance calls for escalated action: #StandWiththe6

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News broke today that NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware has been detected on phones of six Palestinian rights defenders, three of whom work for Al-Haq, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and the Bisan Center for Research and Development, organizations that Israel recently criminalized.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has uncovered a massive Israeli military facial recognition program threatening the safety of the Palestinian people, with Israeli military units photographing thousands of Palestinians to track and criminalize everyone from the children to the elderly. Read more in this policy memo.

These developments are part of the Israeli regime’s calculated, systematic acts of repression and violence against the Palestinian people.

Pegasus is a tool of repression, weaponized by authoritarian governments, which can gain access to essentially everything on a phone, from activating the microphone to tracking the location. An investigative report released by Front Line Defenders, an international human rights organization, reveals the pattern of Israel’s repressive violence while calling for “an immediate global moratorium on the export, sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology until an adequate human rights regulatory framework is in place.” 

Surveillance tech is a threat against all our communities. The Israeli regime exports its weapons and surveillance tech, field-tested on Palestinian people, to oppressive regimes around the world, threatening everyone’s safety while systematically targeting Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.

In the words of USCPR’s Executive Director, Ahmad Abuznaid, “We know what repression looks like. The Israeli regime is a separate-and-unequal apartheid state employing every last authoritarian tactic at its disposal, but we know the truth: that liberation is coming and Palestine will be free.“

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Black-Palestine solidarity is making its way to Capitol Hill

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Progressive Black Democrats are reviving a radical tradition of Palestine solidarity in Congress, challenging Black leaders in their own party and Washington’s support for Israeli state violence.

Black Lives Matter protest in Century City, California on June 6, 2020. (Brett Morrison/CC BY 2.0)
Black Lives Matter protest in Century City, California on June 6, 2020. (Brett Morrison/CC BY 2.0)

Alex Kane, +972 Magazine, June 16, 2021

On May 13, something remarkable happened on the floor of the U.S. Congress: 11 Democratic representatives delivered blunt speeches criticizing Israel for its military assault on Gaza and its crackdown on Palestinian protests in Jerusalem. Perhaps the most powerful speeches came from two Black Congresswomen — Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush — who connected the Black freedom struggle in the United States to the Palestinian movement for liberation.

“When Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets to demand justice, they were met with force,” said Pressley, who represents the Boston area in Massachusetts. “They faced tear gas, rubber bullets, and a militarized police just as our Palestinian brothers and sisters are facing in Jerusalem today.” Her fellow Congresswoman Bush, who represents St. Louis, Missouri, said “When heavily militarized police forces showed up in Ferguson in 2014… our Palestinian siblings showed up too.”

The speeches signaled the growing prominence of a small bloc of Black Democrats — which includes Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Ilhan Omar, in addition to Bush and Pressley — who are drawing on their support for the Black Lives Matter movement to denounce Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians. While there have been past Black Democrats who were openly critical of Israel — figures like former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney — the current crop of Black representatives are more robust in numbers and far more influential within the party and its base.

“My heart instinctively goes out to the minority group that’s being harmed by a government that’s made clear its disdain for them, and it’s why I believe the world needs to value Palestinian life the way that we value Israeli life,” Congressman Bowman, who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County in New York, told +972. “When I say Palestinian lives matter, much like when I say Black Lives Matter, I’m highlighting an unjust status quo that inflicts disproportionate harm on a specific group of people.”

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Seattle Port Demonstration Against Apartheid

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Aisha Mansour‎, The Palestine Solidarity Committee – Seattle, June 13, 2021

Thank you for your readiness to mobilize Seattle! After our successful action yesterday and rally today, we have prevented the ZIM San Diego from unloading for another day!

SSA President Edward DeNike has asked the ZIM San Diego to leave the Port of Seattle but ZIM is refusing. Let’s show apartheid profiteer ZIM what people power can do! Stay tuned for more updates. No mobilization tomorrow morning. Text to subscribe to our alerts (833) 584 – 1948.

BDS Is Gaining Momentum With #BlockTheBoat Actions in Oakland and Seattle, Yoav Litvin, Truthout, June 11, 2021