How The Black Lives Matter and Palestinian Movements Converged

[Draggingtree]

:

How The Black Lives Matter and Palestinian Movements Converged

by Anna Isaacs

In August 2014, Ferguson, Missouri erupted in protests after the death of Michael Brown, while thousands of miles away, war raged in Israel and Gaza.

From this confluence of events emerged a new movement of black-Palestinian solidarity.

How did this alliance come to be?

What does it mean for the racial justice movement?

And where do American Jews fit in?

 

On a weeknight in November, more than 100 students press into a high-ceilinged room on the sixth floor of the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library in College Park. At the front of the room is a white projection screen; at one side, a table stocked with snacks; on the other, a duct-taped white banner, the name of the evening’s event printed in a large stenciled font: “#PALESTINE2FERGUSON.”

 

There’s a call for quiet. Manar Dajani, co-president of the campus’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, begins the evening. “Inshallah, we will all benefit from this event,” Dajani, a senior dressed in a hijab and a sweatshirt with “Palestinian” written in Arabic across the front, tells the room—a diverse crowd that includes black, white, Muslim and Jewish students. She smiles and explains, “That means ‘God willing.’”

http://www.momentmag.com/22800-2/