A Maryland software engineer and former state delegate is suing his state’s governor for signing an executive order into law which targets and penalizes supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS), in what he says is a violation of his First Amendment rights.
New Yorkers turned Times Square into a ground for dissent Friday afternoon, taking to the streets in support of Palestinians actively resisting Israeli occupation and dispossession.
The George Washington University student Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution to divest from nine companies known to be complicit in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights after being delayed a week because of threats to their safety by the anti-BDS group Canary Mission. Still, Canary Mission showed up on campus the night of the Senate vote, and it got very bizarre.
Barnard and Columbia University administrations have often targeted Palestinian solidarity and censored Palestinian voices on campus, but yesterday Barnard students voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling on the university to divest from companies complicit in Palestinian human rights violations. With 1,153 total votes cast, yesterday’s turnout was the largest in Barnard’s history according to the Student Government Association. The final vote 64.3% in favor and just 35.7% opposed.
On the eve of a divestment vote by George Washington University’s student senate, multiple students witnessed two men who they say clearly did not attend the university, posting flyers around campus attacking the student group responsible for the resolution, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Student Association Senators. The vote was cancelled due to safety concerns and rescheduled for April 23.
“The legacy of our people is on the side of justice,” Emily Mayer of the Jewish anti-occupation group If Not Now, said during a demonstration outside the Reform denomination offices in New York against Israel’s March 30 massacre of Palestinians. Counter-demonstrators from the Jewish Defense League chanted in favor of more massacres.
Student members of the Palestine Solidarity Alliance at Hunter College recently made public their proposed ‘Resolution Demanding CUNY to Adopt a Socially Responsible Investment Policy,’ a landmark first step towards pressuring the City University of New York to end its ties with US companies complicit in Israel’s ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights.
In her remarks on “Black-Palestinian Solidarity,” organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest and the Columbia Black Students Organization in honor of Black History Month, Dr. Robyn Spencer, a history professor at Lehman College, explained how her work as a longtime prisoner solidarity activist led her to an explicit solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Bshara Nassar’s curated exhibition “Bethlehem: Beyond the Wall” is hitting the road, on view next week at Manhattan College in the Bronx. “I saw how proudly Americans tell their stories to museums. I saw that many immigrants who came to this country have told their stories to these museums,” Nassar told Mondoweiss, “but I couldn’t find a place to tell my story as a Palestinian.”
When rightwing Israeli ambassador Dani Dayan went to Columbia Univ on February 5, a protest coalition of Students for Justice in Palestine of Columbia and Columbia/Barnard’s Jewish Voice for Peace responded with a mock checkpoint and non-disruptive protest aimed at informing fellow students about Israel’s illegal settlement project, which Dayan, a settler, represents.