Tag Archives: Take Action

Madison-Rafah Annual Fundraising Drive

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Al Samud Playground

This year we are collaborating again with Playgrounds for Palestine to install the Al Samud Playground at a kindergarten on Shuhada Street in Hebron, in the West Bank area of Palestine.

This new playground will be adjacent to the one we helped install at the Qortuba Elementary School in 2016 (Select “Qortuba” at Playgrounds for Palestine).

The Al Samud playground will serve 32 students ages 3 to 5 who live nearby. The area is constantly threatened by militant Israeli settlers who, under the protection of the Israeli army, seek to drive Palestinian families out of the Old City and seize their land and properties. The playground is a rare outdoor play space for the children, but currently lacks equipment. In recent months both children and playground have come under physical attacks.

 Help change this . . .. . . into THIS!

Our friends in Hebron are asking us to help them hold and improve this critical play space by installing playground equipment. The total cost will be around $7,000. Materials and labor will be sourced as locally as possible to support the Palestinian community.

You can donate to the playground project

  • Online via Playgrounds for Palestine. Write “Al Samud Hebron Playground” in the notes. Playgrounds for Palestine will send you a receipt.
  • Mail a check payable to MRSCP and marked “Hebron Playground” to:

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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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#StandWithThe6 and Call Out Biden

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Register for & share the Wednesday Power Half-Hour #StandWithThe6 Call-In to Call Out Biden

Join us for the Power Half-Hour #StandWithThe6 Call-In to Call Out Biden. Join us for 30 minutes on Wednesday, November 3, 2pm ET / 1pm CT / 12pm MT / 11am PT to be part of a wave of people power flooding the White House’s reactivated comments line (202-456-1111) to #StandWithThe6. We’ll take action together and also hear analysis to shape our grassroots advocacy strategy in this moment, in order to advance an end to U.S. military funding to Israel, uplifting effective human rights advocacy work that Israel is working so hard to silence.

Drive Emails for H.Res. 751 #StandWithThe6 Resolution

Just a reminder that we have an email action tool and accompanying social media toolkit for the letter launch. 300 organizations have signed and individual signers are still welcome!

9 progressives joined as original cosponsors on H.Res.751 – Condemning the repressive designation by the Government of Israel of six prominent Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as terrorist organizations. Rep. Holmes Norton has since joined. We’re disturbed by silence from high profile ‘Progressive Except Palestine’ Representatives who claim to care about human rights.


Action Guide for Israel’s Assault on Human Rights Defenders

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US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, 22 Oct 2021

Earlier today, the Israeli Ministry of Defense designated six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations, such as Defense for Children International – Palestine and Addameer, as “terrorist organizations.”
This is another front in the expansion of lawfare and a dangerous expansion of Israel’s attacks on Palestinian dignity, livelihood, and activism.

These six vital organizations are dedicated to defending human rights, children’s rights, political prisoner’s rights, farmer’s lands and livelihoods, gender justice, and more.
Repressive governments have long used baseless claims of ‘terrorism’ to imprison and criminalize advocates for justice, a tactic U.S. organizations in the Black Lives Matter, environmental justice, and Palestine solidarity movements are all too familiar with.
This strategy is textbook repression, which apartheid Israel is employing to intimidate and silence Palestinian human rights defenders who dare to hold it accountable for its crimes.

We declare our solidarity with these six partners in Palestine, and we’re sounding the alarm. Please join us in taking action today and in the coming days:

  1. Share this USCPR statement on social media to raise awareness and declare your solidarity: Twitter thread, Instagram post, and Facebook post.
  2. Check out our online Action Guide for more background and other actions to take. (This is evolving and will continue to get updated going forward.)
  3. If you’re in the U.S., use our partner Jewish Voice for Peace Action’s click-to-call tool to raise your voice with Congress now.

Thank you so much for your support and solidarity.

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Israel labels 6 Palestinian human rights organizations ‘terrorist’

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If Mark Pocan is your representative, please contact his office and thank him, BUT request that he speak out more forcefully and publicly on this.

Pocan’s direct contact info:

  • Madison phone: 608-258-9800
  • DC phone: 202-225-2906
  • Email form

Also, please sign and circulate this petition from If Not Now:

Sec. Blinken: Condemn Israel’s “Terrorist” Designation of Palestinian Human Rights Groups. This is a nationally coordinated campaign by many groups, so be sure to do this! And spread the word.

Dane County Board letter campaign

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This campaign by Madison for Palestine is endorsed by MRSCP.

Use the following links to find your Dane County Board supervisor and compose a letter asking them to support proposed resolution 2021 RES-131, urging the Biden Administration to end military aid to Israel in the wake of the recent assault on Gaza.

New Prime Minister, Same Human Rights Violations

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Dear Friend,

I am heavy, but hopeful. The last two weeks have been heartbreaking and enraging in so many ways: we see U.S. government fingerprints, our tax dollars at work, on carnage around the world, from Afghanistan to Palestine. Our government has left the Afghan people to a chaotic power vacuum in the aftermath of 20 years of U.S. invasion, and denied refuge to so many. And the U.S. welcomed the new Prime Minister of Apartheid Israel, Naftali Bennett, to the White House just days after Israeli forces shot Palestinian protesters in Gaza, injuring a 13-year-old child.

But as a communication professional in advocacy, I know the power of shifting the narrative to transform what’s possible for future policy. This week we’ve seen people-powered actions disrupting the narratives of the powerful. On Afghanistan, that looks like an outpouring of people’s support for Afghan refugees—follow Afghans for a Better Tomorrow on Instagram and Twitter for one view into the outpouring of community support for providing refuge to Afghans made vulnerable by our disastrous foreign policy. And on Palestine, we’ve been part of a powerful conclusion to August’s month of action this week, with people like you speaking up in the media, in joint letters, and in the streets to condemn this red carpet rollout for war criminal Bennett and push toward an end to U.S. support for Israel’s colonialism once and for all.

Join us by raising your voice: Today the mainstream media is reporting on Israeli PM Bennett and President Biden’s meeting on “peace” and “security,” while an end to billions of dollars of U.S. weapons to bomb, cage, and displace Palestinians remains off the agenda.



Sign this petition to demand President Biden support real justice for Palestinians.

Ben & Jerry’s: Stop supporting apartheid in Palestine

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SumOfUs, June 28, 2021

Last month, during the eleven-day assault by Israeli military on the Gaza Strip, 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, died. And last week, thousands of right-wing nationalists paraded around Jerusalem shouting ‘death to Arabs’.

The only way to stop the never-ending cycle of settlement expansion and violence is to make the economic cost of this illegal occupation too high to bear. 

Ben & Jerry’s has been one of the world’s most progressive companies since its inception, but they continue to sell and operate on stolen Palestinian land. 

And if we can get them to stop supporting the apartheid regime, other global companies like Puma and Motorola will be forced to follow suit.

Tell Ben & Jerry’s: stop supporting the brutal occupation of Palestine.

The recent violence in the region is just the latest in the chapter of oppression of Palestinians — a conflict that is marked by decades of apartheid, colonization, land theft, forced evictions, demolitions, and displacement of Palestinians by settlers waving Israel’s flag.

While Israeli settlers on stolen Palestinian land use freezers to store Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, people in Gaza have no choice but to use them to store the bodies of dead Palestinians babies as was the case after the deadly assault when close to 2,000 were killed in 2014.

The company’s normally active social media has been silent since the eleven-day assault. We know from inside sources that Ben & Jerry’s is deciding right now whether to pull out of Israel for good.

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