Over the Past 11 months, Palestine has experienced a complete scholasticide, with Israeli forces targeting Palestinian educational institutions and infrastructures as a means of erasing Palestinian futures and Identities.
Black Lives Matter Grassroots stands unwaveringly with the Palestinian people, and students around the world who dare to put their bodies and futures on the line to demand a U.S. arms embargo against Israel and a #FreePalestine. In the wake of a Democratic National Convention that locked out Palestinian voices and massive protests outside the Chicago Convention Center. This comes as courses resume on American campuses for the Fall semester and many universities are imposing bans on protests, encampments, and limitations on free speech. Students have served as the vanguard of this – and nearly every – justice movement and their courage and activism must be protected.
This past Spring, students and community members around the globe erected encampments demanding that colleges and universities disclose their investments and divest from Israeli companies and partnerships. As the new academic year commences and we approach the 2024 Presidential election, these calls will intensify.
Many of these student protests have been met with intimidation, encampment raids, repression, suspensions, expulsions, arrests, and outright violence from police and zionists. Students and community members have suffered major injury to their bodies at the hands of police and zionist operatives during these raids and arrests. Additionally, universities around the nation are rolling out draconian policies that ban student protests, encampments, and other forms of peaceful demonstration. The University of California and California State University systems have recently issued directives banning encampments, limiting free speech, and barring facial coverings reflecting their increasingly repressive stance against student activism. Additionally, New York University has designated “zionist” as a protected class, equating the oppressive ideology with racial, gender, and religious identities. These actions signal a declaration of war against student activism nationwide.
As students return to campuses there comes the likelihood of additional protests. We can expect continued calls for disclosure and divestment of university resources from Israel, and also the end of all ties with weapons manufacturers and warmongering corporations that often come to campuses to recruit students into their workforces. Rather than ban protests, condemn student and community activists, and threaten retaliation and harm, university administrators should take a class themselves on the history and effectiveness of righteous student protests. Student protests, activism, and organizing is now celebrated for expanding voting rights, winning ethnic studies, ending de jure segregation, bringing an end to the war in Vietnam and Apartheid in South Africa. Students have always been on the frontlines of the Black Lives Matter movement and student organizing will be a force in ending the genocide and winning a free Palestine.
Universities must ask themselves whether they stand on the side of war profiteers or on the side of the students and communities they profess to serve. Black Lives Matter Grassroots is with the students, communities, freedom fighters, and lovers of peace, and is committed to standing and organizing in solidarity.
All over the state, symbolic waters are also on the rise, and marginalized Gen Z’ers are struggling to keep their heads above it. As DeSantis continues to expand his “war on wokeness” for his presidential bid, his policies are devastating marginalized communities, leaving many young people reeling as they try to survive in the state they call home
They want to kill us because we are a movement driven by people who are unbought and unbossed.
One year after 15-year-old Jaheim McMillan was shot and killed by a Gulfport police officer, his mother has filed a wrongful death lawsuit for $10 billion against the City of Gulfport and the officer who court documents say shot McMillan.
In February 2023, a Grand Jury cleared the officer of wrongdoing in the shooting, finding no criminal conduct on his behalf.
