Tag Archives: Boycott

YWCA Madison’s Racial Justice Summit

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Madison365 staff, Sep 1, 2022

The YWCA Madison’s Racial Justice Summit will take place Sept. 28-30. Organizers are inviting the community to practice “Weaving Our Pasts, Present and Emergent Futures for Racial Justice and Co-Liberation.”

For this 21st annual Summit, YWCA Madison is collaborating with local and national practitioners, educators, artists, authors, and advocates to curate a combination of virtual and in-person experiences. The motivation is to disrupt the (mis)understanding of the different dimensions of justice as separate issues, and support an understanding of their interconnected nature.

The hope is for the Summit to support communities in deeply understanding how racial justice, restorative justice, gender justice, immigration justice, disability justice, climate justice, and so on, are truly different transgenerational dimensions of our ongoing building of practice, community, interconnectedness and power within movements for justice and co-liberation.

Some of the Summit keynotes this year are sisters Angela Davis and Fania Davis, Ericka Huggins, Linda Sarsour, Rudy Bankston, Jenifer Garcia, and sisters adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown.

For any other questions, please email racialjustice@ywcamadison.org.

To purchase tickets, click here.

Linda Sarsour has advocated for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories and expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. (Wikipedia)

Angela Davis supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. In 2019 the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) rescinded Davis’s Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award for Davis’s vocal support for Palestinian rights and the movement to boycott Israel. Davis said her loss of the award was “not primarily an attack against me but rather against the very spirit of the indivisibility of justice.” The BCRI reversed its decision and issued a public apology, stating that there should have been more public consultation. (Wikipedia)

‘No Tech for Israeli Apartheid’

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‘No Tech for Israeli Apartheid:’ Protesters Disrupt AWS Conference Over Military Contract, Edward Ongweso, Jr, VICE, July 12, 2022
Activists accuse Amazon of profiting from Israeli apartheid and insulating the country from criticism over the displacement of Palestinians.

July 14, 2022
Join Roger Waters for student solidarity with Palestine

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Webinar: July 14 at 2 PM CT via ZOOM

 
On the eve of Roger Waters Montreal’s Bell Centre performance, the rock legend will be supporting McGill students who’ve faced a litany of attacks for advancing the Palestinian Liberation movement. The event will discuss attacks against Palestine solidarity on campuses across Canada and the importance of supporting the Palestinian struggle.

Waters will be joined by a McGill student representative to talk about the success and roadblocks to Palestine solidarity at McGill.

    Host: Canadian Foreign Policy Institute

    Co-sponsors: Just Peace Advocates, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill and Palestinian and Jewish Unity Montreal

    Media Sponsor: Rabble.ca

    Read: Rock legend Roger Waters will rally with McGill students for Palestine by Bianca Mugyenyi, July 11, 2022, Rabble.ca

    Share Tweet • Invite on Facebook

    See media release and list of several dozen endorsing organizations.

Register

17 years of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions

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Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), July 8, 2022

Today our movement celebrates 17 years.

On this anniversary of the 2005 call from the largest Palestinian coalition to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, we want to celebrate this growing anti-apartheid movement. 

Join us in celebrating the most significant moments in the growth of the anti-apartheid movement, its globalization, its impact, and indispensable role in bringing about an unprecedented narrative shift around Palestine and the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights.

Watch and share the video marking the 17 years of the BDS movement
    

Thanks to you, we were able to collectively globalize the struggle. Our BDS movement has played a central and leading role in shifting the narrative and continues that crucial role today in shining the path forward: boycotts, divestment, and lawful, targeted sanctions as the most effective forms of international solidarity with the struggle of Indigenous Palestinians for liberation.

So far, 2022 has been a very significant year in the history of our inclusive, anti-racist movement, which is rooted in a rich heritage of Palestinian popular resistance and inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement and U.S. Civil Rights struggle, among others. With reports from the UN and Amnesty International, adding to the body of work developed by Palestinian, South African and other groups and individuals, we now have an international human rights consensus condemning Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and calling for accountability measures to dismantle it.   

As Palestinians continue to resist, our anti-apartheid movement is growing fast. The Unity Intifada of 2021 showed that Palestinians are one, across our fragments in colonized Palestine and across the world, in refugee camps and the diaspora, in standing against Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid. 

As the Palestinian anti-apartheid movement grows larger and more impactful, Freedom, Justice, and Equality, come nearer.

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Ben & Jerry’s sues parent company over Israeli deal

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Complaint says Unilever sale of Israeli business to a local licensee to sell its ice-cream in the occupied West Bank undermines its values


Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream delivery truck at factory in Be’er Tuvia, Israel. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Ben & Jerry’s has sued its parent Unilever plc to block the sale of its Israeli business to a local licensee, saying it was inconsistent with its values to sell its ice-cream in the occupied West Bank.

The complaint filed in the US district court in Manhattan said the sale announced on 29 June threatened to undermine the integrity of the Ben & Jerry’s brand, which Ben & Jerry’s board retained independence to protect when Unilever acquired the company in 2000.

An injunction against transferring the business and related trademarks to Avi Zinger, who runs American Quality Products Ltd, was essential to “protect the brand and social integrity Ben & Jerry’s has spent decades building”, the complaint said.

Ben & Jerry’s said its board voted 5-2 to sue, with the two Unilever appointees dissenting.

Unilever did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but has defended Ben & Jerry’s right to advance its socially conscious mission.

Lawyers for Zinger also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Last week, Zinger settled his own lawsuit against Ben & Jerry’s for refusing to renew his license.

The dispute highlights challenges facing consumer brands taking a stand on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which most countries consider illegal.

In April 2019, Airbnb reversed a five-month-old decision to stop listing properties in those settlements.

Last July, Ben & Jerry’s said it would end sales in the occupied West Bank and parts of East Jerusalem, and sever its three-decade relationship with Zinger.

Israel condemned the move, and some Jewish groups accused Ben & Jerry’s of antisemitism. Some investors, including at least seven US states, divested their Unilever holdings.

Unilever has more than 400 brands including Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Knorr soup and Vaseline skin lotion.

Ben & Jerry’s was founded in a renovated gas station in 1978 by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

No longer involved in Ben & Jerry’s operations, they wrote in the New York Times last July that they supported Israel but opposed its “illegal occupation” of the West Bank.

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The right to boycott is heading to the Supreme Court

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I’m writing with breaking news. Today the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that boycotts are not protected by the First Amendment. The ACLU has confirmed they will take the case to the Supreme Court, with huge implications for free speech and the right to boycott in the US. Our team has been following this case closely as one of the key stories chronicled in our latest film, Boycott.

The case centers around an Arkansas law that requires public contractors to sign a pledge promising that they do not boycott Israel. Versions of this law have been passed in 33 states since 2016. In recent years, several Americans have challenged these laws, suing their respective states for violating their First Amendment rights. In almost every case — from Texas to Arizona to Kansas to Georgia — the plaintiffs won, with courts finding the anti-boycott laws unconstitutional.

The only exception has been Arkansas, where Alan Leveritt, publisher of the Arkansas Times, is the plaintiff. Alan originally lost in District Court but when he appealed to a three-judge panel at the Eighth Circuit, he won. The State of Arkansas was then granted a re-hearing. Today, the final ruling came out against Alan with the court deciding that boycotts, even when politically motivated, are strictly economic activity and not a form of expression. Brian Hauss, the ACLU’s chief litigator in the case has said that the decision “misreads Supreme Court precedent and departs from this nation’s long standing traditions.” He expressed hope that the Supreme Court “will set things right and reaffirm the nation’s historic commitment to providing robust protection to political boycotts.”

Alan believes that as a news publisher, he has a special duty to stand up for free speech rights. As he wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed: “We don’t take political positions in return for advertising. If we signed the pledge, I believe, we’d be signing away our right to freedom of conscience. And as journalists, we would be unworthy of the protections granted us under the First Amendment.”

When we started filming Boycott, we understood there was a risk that the anti-boycott legislation vis-a-vis Israel could be used as a template. By the time we finished the film, this was already becoming a reality. There are now copycat bills targeting boycotts of fossil fuels, firearms, and other industries. As Alan’s case heads to the Supreme Court, it is not only advocacy for Palestinian rights, the environment or gun safety that stands on the line — but our very right to protest, and to band together for collective political action.

With the stakes increasingly high, we remain committed to sounding the alarm on this story, and you can help us. Share the news on social media, ask your go-to news outlet to cover this story, and get in touch to organize a screening of Boycott in your community. These laws have been able to pass with such ease in large part due to the lack of public scrutiny around its origins and implications. The time to change that is now.

Onwards,
Julia Bacha
Creative Director, Just Vision
Director, Boycott

Montgomery Bus Boycott, December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956

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Rosa Parks sitting on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 1956. (Encyclopedia Britannica)


The boycott was organized by local ministers, including Martin Luther King, Jr. (PBS)

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.

PUMA says it’s “complicated.” Palestinians say it’s apartheid.

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Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), April 13, 2022

Take action to thank Dua Lipa for standing up for Palestinian rights and urge her, as a prominent PUMA ambassador, to help convince PUMA to end complicity in Israel’s regime of apartheid.

    “These are the lives and homes of innocent people – the world needs to intervene and put a stop to this. No more ethnic cleansing!!!!!” — @dualipa

That’s what global star Dua Lipa posted to her 80M followers on Instagram last May following apartheid Israel’s escalation of violence against Indigenous Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem and elsewhere.

When smeared by right-wing, racist extremist Shmuley Boteach in a full-page ad in the New York Times, she didn’t back down.  She tweeted:

    “I stand in solidarity with all oppressed people and reject all forms of racism.” — @dualipa

Dua Lipa is a prominent PUMA ambassador. PUMA must listen to her.

As Israel once again escalates its violence against Palestinians, thank Dua Lipa for her stand and urge her to help convince PUMA to end complicity in Israel’s regime of apartheid.

Dua Lipa, help us push PUMA over to the right side of history.

PUMA is the main sponsor of the Israel Football Association, which governs and advocates for teams in illegal Israeli settlements dispossessing Palestinians. 

PUMA’s own internal memo shows its ambassadors are alarmed over its role in Israeli apartheid. But PUMA says it’s “complicated.”

Urge Dua Lipa to join Palestinians, Amnesty International and a growing consensus globally. 

Dua Lipa, Palestinians know it’s not complicated.
PUMA supports Israeli apartheid.

Dua Lipa is a vocal supporter of justice for all.

Fans at Dua Lipa’s concerts in Manchester and Dublin have urged her to take her principled stand to PUMA. 

Join them by taking action online today.

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