Fantastic video from the University of Southern Florida. Titled, USF for Human Rights (Divest 2014), it is from the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP-USF). The group is asking the Board of Trustees of the school’s foundation to end involvement in human rights violations in Palestine:
“To create a policy that ensures our endowment is invested in a socially just manner, with regard to human rights and environmental welfare…To declare divestment from corporations directly complicit in human rights violations [Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, G4S, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corporation] against the Palestinian people”
Here is the group’s petition. Excerpts:
As members of a university that reveres the Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we strive to uphold the same values of justice, equality, and humanity that Dr. King fought for during his lifetime. To honor these values, we should strive to stop profiting from corporations with human rights violations.
Our university was on the wrong side of history when it failed to divest from corporations affiliated with South African apartheid. This time we hope to be on the right side of history. We ask that USF, out of respect for international law, and in consistency with US and local law, stop investing in corporations that are continuously and knowingly complicit in severe human rights violations. Despite our inactivity in past injustices, there is a current opportunity in which we expect our university to act accordingly with an honorable conscious.
For decades, the Palestinian people have been suffering from a system of occupation and oppression that strips them of their basic human rights. The Israeli occupation of Palestine is affecting every aspect of the Palestinian people’s lives: demolishing their homes, depriving them of land and water, and restricting their livelihoods to small areas of land behind a massive and illegal separation wall. These are only a few of the afflictions faced by Palestinians on a day-to-day basis. There are multinational corporations who support and profit from this illegal and brutal occupation.
Read the rest of the petition here.
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http://forward.com/articles/192807/france-crackdown-on-boycott-israel-activists-spark/
Great video, Annie.
Does citing MLK raise awareness and/or heighten relevance of this issue among activist black students? My suspicion is that it does not. If that’s correct, why it does not is something that needs to be explored, at this level (i.e. before any “why not” sentiment gets ingrained into future-leadership thinking).
The civil rights parallels are obvious and profound, but adopting MLK and that struggle, without a conversation or asking, may be an alienating exercise rather than a solidarity exercise, particularly with black activists.
We all treasure and guard our heroes.
Just askin’…
Thanks, Annie.
Regrettable sentence end. Probably too late to call it back, eh?
That’s a very good video.
I think it speaks to a wide audience– necessary for any University in these United States, but especially in the South and in FL.