May 28, NYC: CUNY Must Divest! Rally and Press Conference for Palestine

Friday, 28 May
3:00 pm
John Jay College
524 W 59th St
New York City
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/2951785921811362/

This event will publicize the CUNY Statement for Palestine and then march to CUNY offices. See latest statement updates at the link.

CUNY Community Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

[To add your name, please click here or email [email protected]]

We, members of the City University of New York community, stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine resisting the violence and oppression of Israeli settler colonial and apartheid rule.

We condemn the brutal bombing of Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, by Israeli forces. This represents the latest chapter of a nearly-fifteen-year illegal blockade that has transformed the territory into a prison for its two million inhabitants, most of whom descend from refugees expelled and driven from their homes during the Nakba that resulted from the establishment of the settler colonial state of Israel.

We condemn the forced removal of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah—part of the broader colonial project of dispossession and expulsion, including unequal residency rights and discriminatory planning policies designed to advance the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem. We oppose the raiding of the al-Aqsa mosque, and the de facto annexation of East Jerusalem, which is illegally occupied territory. 

We mourn all loss of life. But we do not subscribe to a “both sides” rhetoric that erases the military, economic, media, and global power that Israel has over Palestine. This narrative  ignores and conceals the meaningful differences between Israel—one of the most heavily militarized states in the world that receives $3.8 billion of military aid annually from the U.S.—and a Palestinian population resisting colonial occupation and oppression. We pledge to do all in our power to change the conversation.

We assert that this is not a “conflict” that is too “controversial and complex” to assess. Since its inception, Israel has used violent force, punitive bureaucracy, and its legal system to expel Palestinians from their rightful homes and to remove Palestinian people from their land. Israeli law systematically discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Palestinians are cut off from each other by a network of checkpoints, laws, settler-only highways, and a separation wall that swallows illegally occupied Palestinian land. Both Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have recently concluded that Israeli policies and practices towards Palestinians amount to apartheid, reinforcing a decades old analysis of Palestinian and international solidarity organizations.

We wholeheartedly endorse the “Palestine and Praxis” open letter and call to action, affirming our own commitment to speaking out in defense of “the Palestinian struggle as an indigenous liberation movement confronting a settler colonial state,” as well as foundational principles of scholarly integrity and academic freedom. We vow to support those who are most vulnerable to attack for organizing and speaking out on our campuses, including Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and other students, faculty, and staff of color.

We unequivocally endorse and amplify the call from the Palestinian Feminist Collective for “feminists everywhere to speak up, organize, and join the struggle for Palestinian liberation” and the solidarity statement from gender studies departments.  

We hail the fortitude and determination of the Palestinian people, who remain, despite the fragmentation of their populations, united in their demands to end their oppression. May 15 marked the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba, an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine that drove over 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes, villages, and cities between the years 1947-1949. Today the vast majority of these Palestinians and their descendants are refugees in bordering countries and in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. We take our stand with Palestinians who have been resisting settler colonialism for more than one hundred years.

Therefore, we pledge to:

• Initiate, support, and amplify campaigns in solidarity with Palestinian calls for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, at CUNY and in our wider communities. In particular, we echo the demands of the John Jay Student Letter to Demand BDS and Solidarity with Palestinian Resistance and stand with any and all student-led resolutions demanding CUNY’s immediate divestment from companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes. As of 2014, CUNY invests at least $1,093,900 in weapons manufacturers such as Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon; tech and security companies such as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, G4S, and Motorola Solutions; and construction firms such as Caterpillar and Cemex.
• Demand that our individual campuses, and CUNY as a whole, endorse and support the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
• Stand in solidarity with students, staff, and faculty organizing for justice in Palestine at CUNY and everywhere. In particular, we pledge to push back against attempts to repress Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, and similar student-led efforts, at CUNY or anywhere. The “Palestine exception to free speech” needs to end!
• Highlight Palestinian scholarship on Palestine in syllabi, our writing, and through invitation of  Palestinian scholars and community members to speak at departmental and university events, and extend this approach to any and all indigenous scholars within the university and in our communities.
• Support community efforts and legislation to pressure our government to end funding for Israeli military aggression.

Against the rain of bombs, against the roving murderous mobs, against settler colonialism, against the support of complacent Western governments, we stand with the people of Palestine. We join together in rededicating ourselves to working against all forms of racism, colonialism, and injustice at CUNY, in the classroom, on campus, in our communities, and beyond.

[To add your name, please click here or email [email protected]]