Toward Justice:
The Black/Palestine Solidarity Tour
Dudley Branch Library, 65 Warren
Street, Roxbury
Wednesday,
April 6, 7:00pm
Presented by Haymarket Books
Co-sponsors: International Socialist
Organization, Northeastern University Students for Justice in Palestine,
Progressive Student Alliance at NEU, Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine,
Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, Black and Pink
When
heavily militarized police in Ferguson, Missouri, confronted African American
protesters angry at the police murder of Mike Brown in 2014, Palestinians
watching events unfold from Gaza began sending tweets about how to cope with the
teargas filling the streets.
Such
an act of solidarity was more than a mere expression of support from people who,
though half a world away, know firsthand about state repression. Police in
cities across the U.S.—including police in Ferguson and Baltimore—have turned to
Israel for training in how to deploy tactics honed in suppressing the
Palestinian struggle for justice. And the U.S. directly supports Israel’s
dispossession of the Palestinians—to the tune of some $3 billion per
year.
Today,
the movement in solidarity with Palestine is facing an unprecedented assault,
especially the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign on college campuses.
This assault has come in the form of punishment and reprisal of students in
solidarity with Palestine, the firing or public smearing of pro-Palestinian
professors, the de-funding of pro-Palestine students groups, and the prohibition
of the Palestinian flag on campuses.
The
Black Lives Matter movement is also seeing push-back as we see campus
administrations cut African American studies programs and cops continue to get
away with murder. Still, many on our side are drawing parallels between
anti-racist struggles on an international scale, as evidenced by the success of
the 2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine and
campus Black Lives Matter chapters demanding divestment from Israel’s apartheid
state. Many of the issues facing the Black community in the U.S.—police
violence, job discrimination, poverty, and environmental racism—are the same
problems that Palestinians face.
The
solidarity poses a significant threat to US’ global hegemony and the racism on
which it relies. A new generation of activists is forging ties of solidarity
between the struggles of Palestinians and Black people—struggles for equal
rights, for dignity, for freedom. This tour hopes to make a modest contribution
to this project—by unearthing the inspiring history of Black/Palestinian
solidarity and by making these lessons relevant for present-day efforts seeking
to transform the future.
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Featured speakers:
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Featured speakers:
Aaron
Dixon is
one of the co-founders of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party,
chronicled in his 2012 book My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther
Party Captain. Dixon has since founded Central House, a nonprofit that provides
transitional housing for youth, and was one of the co-founders of the Cannon
House, a senior assisted-living facility. Aaron ran for US Senate on the Green
Party ticket in 2006.
Khury
Petersen-Smith co-authored,
with Stanford alum Kristian Davis Bailey, the influential 2015 Black Solidarity
Statement with Palestine, covered by Ebony and other outlets. Khury is a member
of the International Socialist Organization and is active in Palestine
solidarity and anti-racist organizing. He has written about the politics of
Black liberation for Jacobin Magazine and the International Socialist
Review.
Remi
Kanazi is
a poet, writer, and organizer based in New York City. He is the author the
author of Poetic
Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine
and the editor of Poets
For Palestine.
His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world,
including Salon, Al
Jazeera English,
and BBC
Radio. Kanazi
has toured hundreds of venues across the United States, Canada, Europe and the
Middle East, and he has appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well
as Poetry International. He is a Lannan Residency Fellow and an Advisory
Committee member for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of
Israel.
Kanazi is
a poet, writer, and organizer based in New York City. He is the author the
author of Poetic
Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine
and the editor of Poets
For Palestine.
His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world,
including Salon, Al
Jazeera English,
and BBC
Radio. Kanazi
has toured hundreds of venues across the United States, Canada, Europe and the
Middle East, and he has appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well
as Poetry International. He is a Lannan Residency Fellow and an Advisory
Committee member for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of
Israel.
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