Wednesday in Dudley Sq. - Toward Justice: The Black/Palestine Solidarity Tour

Chris Morrill morrill.chris at gmail.com
Sat Apr 2 12:17:26 EDT 2016


*Toward Justice: The Black/Palestine Solidarity Tour*
*Dudley Branch Library, 65 Warren Street, Roxbury*
*Wednesday, April 6, 7:00pm*

RSVP on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/events/253949538273006/>

*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
<http://www.blackforpalestine.com/read-the-statement.html>  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.


------
*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.
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