From Mondoweiss
Please support the first Students for Justice in Palestine national conference. This kind of campus organizing is vital, and these students need your financial support to make the conference a reality.
by TANYA KEILANI
As a daughter of Palestinian refugees waiting to return to their birthplaces for 63 years – and as a student activist – I have seen real changes in the landscape of campus debate and rhetoric when it comes to Palestinian rights.
Having spent the years of my undergraduate and graduate education as an organizer in student groups for Palestine, I can tell you that our membership has expanded to include people not traditionally involved in Palestine solidarity activism, that the number of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters nationwide has increased and that communication between these groups has grown accordingly.
The impact of these changes will be made all the more tangible this fall. After months of planning, members of SJP chapters from across the US will meet in New York City for an unprecedented event: the first ever National SJP Conference. We aim to emerge from this conference with a more fully developed student movement.
The time could not be more appropriate to build upon our new-found unity and strength. Our student movement continues to gain ground alongside the international BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement despite efforts by powerful institutions and organizations that work to stifle open debate and the free exchange of ideas both internationally and at the university.
In that spirit, this conference will provide a forum in which students can collaboratively develop the tools to defend their right to express their views on campus through workshops geared toward educational and political development, skill sharing, campaign building and strengthening our movement. Speakers will include high-profile academics and practitioners who will share their experience and their thoughts about how solidarity works and how students can best identify and address the injustices faced by the Palestinians.
Growing up, I recall my parents warning me not to tell people that I was Palestinian. If anyone asked, I was Jordanian. But everything told me I was from Palestine – my mother’s narratives of her family’s pre-1967 visit to her father’s farmland (also her birthplace) in what is now Israel (after ‘67 Israel made it impossible for us to visit this now-colonized land), old family photographs, my father’s expertise at making Nabulsi knafeh, and of course, that fact that half of my family still lives on the land.
Today, I’m no longer afraid of celebrating the identity of my family or defending their right to live with sovereignty on the lands in which they were born for fear of persecution. I am grateful for the work of generations of activists whose efforts have brought greater attention to the question of Palestine. Now in my adulthood, I know I’m not alone.
As a student in 2011, I can speak to the diversity of our movement. We are not all Palestinian, but we all are committed to justice. Multiple inspirations guide our commitment: those working for immigrant rights see the Palestinian refugee crisis reflected in their own struggles; ex-military know the horrors of war and occupation firsthand; young Jews and Israelis understand that Judaism and Zionism are not synonymous and are unwilling to have atrocities committed in their name; Americans refuse to contribute billions of their tax dollars to fund occupation; and those from previously colonized countries acknowledge that colonialism is alive and well and that it is their moral responsibility to oppose all forms of colonialism.
SJP members do their work fully aware that the opposition is funded, staffed and trained. We've seen fellow students receive paid fellowships to represent the Israeli state on our campuses and the Israeli government has funded groups and IDF soldiers to tour US schools in order to sway students their way. But even as SJP members scramble to make ends meet financially and lack externally-published handbooks telling us how to conduct campus activism (ADL, AIPAC, WUJS, etc.), Zionist groups are no match for us.
The national conference is a huge undertaking for all of us, and we hope you will all find the time to invest in those who are investing in our futures. Our student groups lack resources and funds; so, we need your help to bring students to the conference and to help cover the expenses that an event like this requires. We are reaching out to you, our allies, to help make this conference a reality. The more you help us raise, the more we are able to help students pay for their travel and to ensure that their conference experience is as accommodating and powerful as we envision.
Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation.
If you would like to attend the conference or read more about it, see our website.
Don't forget to visit our Facebook page and pass this information on to any and all in the Palestine solidarity community.
Tanya Keilani is a member of Columbia University Students for Justice in Palestine and the National SJP Conference Organizing Committee.
Thanks to Mondoweiss
I am pleased that you are having your national conference at Columbia in Oct. However, the first National Conference of the Students for Justice in Palestine took place on Feb. 15-18, 2002 at Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley. I attended this extraordinary meeting, part of a delegation from the U. of Minnesota. I can't quite remember how many colleges and universities were in attendance, but I'm going to guess that there were at least 30 to 40, and a total of 250 to 300 individuals. Some of our speakers were As'ad Abu Khalil, Ghassan Andoni, Sami Al-Arian, Joel Beinin, Phyllis Bennis, and many others. It was at this early meeting that we had begun to discuss boycott and divestment as strategies. One thing I do know is that this meeting was a first of its kind and a memorable opportunity for many activists to establish long-term relationships.
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