Sunday, 15 May
4 pm – 7 pm
Uptown Auto Body and Fender
401 26th St
Oakland, CA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/551591961667213/
Art Forces and AROC invite you to join us to remember the Nakba, the Black Panthers, and Indigenous Resistance.
Doors open at 4pm for the art exhibition and blessing at the Oakland Palestine Solidarity Mural
with Traditional Te’o Kalli Mejica Dancers
Directly across the street from the Uptown
OPENING PERFORMERS INCLUDE:
Young GIfted and Black
Silk Road Debke
SPEAKERS and DIALOGUE with:
Greg Thomas
Emory Douglas
Maytha Alhassen
Rabab Abdelhadi
Tony Gonzales
Van Dell
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ENDORSED BY:
QUIT
AIM West
Art Forces
California Coalition for Women Prisoners
AROC
Nor Cal Friends of Sabeel
Palestine Youth Movement
Freedom Archives
AMED Studies: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, College of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University
Middle East Children’s Alliance
IJAN
Critical Resistance
BAYAN
Anthropology and Social Change – CIIS
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PAINTERS and GRAPHIC ARTISTS:
Pedro Alcantara-Herron (Colombia)
Leroy Clarke (Trinidad & Tobago)
Jonelle Davies (Black America, Trinidad & Tobago)
Emory Douglas (Black America)
Antonio Frasconi (Uruguay)
Ahmed Hmeedat (Palestine)
Ivan Lopez (Colombia, America)
Malaquias Montoya (Mexico, Mexican-America)
Rafael Morante (Cuba)
Prisoners of the California Hunger Strikes
Nidal El Khairy (Palestine, Jordan)
Leonard Peltier (Anishinabe, Dakota, and Lakota Nations)
Priya Handa
Sharif Zarkout (Palestinian American)
Marius Mason
FILM AND PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTISTS:
Camila Smith (North America)
Haile Gerima (Ethiopia, African America)
Lucas Guilkey and Salima Hamirini
Dick Bancroft
Michelle Vignes
Tamari Photo Collection
Dave Clark
Peter Fryer
FIDA Photo
Rula Halawani
Kent Wilkens
Patizio Esposito
Skip Schiel
Pablo Pitcher
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INSTITUTIONS:
Abu Jihad Museum (Abu Dis/Jerusalem, Palestine)
OSPAAAL (Havanna, Cuba)
Inkworks (Berkeley, CA)
The Black Panther newspaper (Oakland, CA)
Al Quds University Media (Abu Dis/Jerusalem, Palestine)
Freedom Archives
AIM West
NorCal Friends of Sabeel
We will be also doing a live ALL AGES Mural throughout the event, bring your kids and loved ones!
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“We have to reinforce solidarity with freedom-minded people all around the world.”
– Issa Qaraka, Minister of Prisoner Affairs, Palestine
“George Jackson in the Sun of Palestine” is a travelling multimedia exhibition that expresses the depth of solidarity and closeness between the struggles against colonization in Palestine and around the world. In this regard the exhibit will change with each location as local artists join the exhibit.
The impetus and title for the exhibit stem from the inspiration Black Panther George Jackson received from Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim’s poem “Enemy of the Sun.” After Jackson was assassinated in 1971 a handwritten copy of this poem was found in his prison cell. The Black Panther Party shared the classical Palestinian poem in the party’s newspaper, under the assumption it was written by Jackson himself.
Curator Greg Thomas states:
“That was a magical mistake that expressed the depth of solidarity and closeness, because the similarity in voice and situation is unimaginable. Palestinian resistance poetry occupied a large space in the lives of black people across the ocean and it is all because of George Jackson, the eternal enemy of the sun’s enemy.”
ENEMY OF THE SUN
by Samih Al Qassem
I may, if you wish, lose my livelihood,
I may sell my shirt and my bed,
I may work as a stonecutter,
A street sweeper, a porter,
I may clean your store
Or rummage your garbage for food,
O enemy of the sun
But, I shall not compromise,
And to the last pulse in my veins,
I shall resist.
You may take the last strip of my land,
You may plunder my heritage,
You may burn my books and my poems,
Or throw my flesh to the dogs,
You may spread a web of terror,
On the roof tops of my village,
O enemy of the sun,
But, I shall not compromise,
And to the last pulse in my veins,
I shall resist.
You may put out the light in my eyes,
You may deprive me of my mother’s kisses,
You may destroy my history,
You may curse my father, my people,
You may deprive my children of their smile
And of life’s necessities,
You may fool my people with a borrowed face,
You may spread a wall of terror around me,
You may glue my eyes with humiliation,
O enemy of the sun,
But, I shall not compromise,
And to the last pulse in my veins,
I shall resist,
O enemy of the sun.
The decorations are raised at the port,
The exclamations fill the air,
The heart is a glow,
A sail is seen in the horizon,
Challenging the wind and the depths,
It is Homer,
Returning home from the sea of losses.
The sun has returned,
Together with my exiled ones,
For her sake, and his
I swear, I shall not compromise,
And to the last pulse in my veins,
I shall resist, I shall resist,
I SHALL RESIST!!!!
