IJAN Participated in Campus BDS Conference
Sunday, November 22, 2009 Amherst, MA
From November 20-22, IJAN organizers attended the Campus BDS Conference at Hampshire College, the first US campus to divest from Israel. The conference was an inspiring gathering of students from more than 50 colleges and universities, and Palestine solidarity movement activists from across the U.S., working together to expand and solidify Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions work on our campuses and in our communities. Hampshire organizers shared lessons from their divestment campaign and looked to the work ahead of them to maintain divestment and grow the explicit commitment of the campus to Palestinian liberation. At the conference, IJAN organizers facilitated severalrequested workshops.
An IJAN presentation on "White Anti-Racism and Jewish Anti-Zionism: Building Alliance and Joint Struggle" encouraged a lively discussion about bringing anti-racist and anti-Zionist analyses into our Palestine solidarity, BDS and broader campus work. The workshop focused on identifying the role that we each play in a larger program of liberation from the location that we are in (community, social, economic, geographic, etc.). In our discussion, we encouraged the expression of BDS work as part of multiple struggles against occupation, colonization, imperialism and racism, and we emphasized building joint struggle between the Palestine liberation movement and other struggles for self-determination.
In collaboration with UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), IJAN also facilitated a workshop entitled "Dealing with Opposition and Backlash," in which we presented IJAN's principles, strategy, methods and examples of defense for groups politically targeted by Zionist organizations. In this workshop, members of Berkeley SJP spoke about their experiences and strategies for dealing with Zionist organizations at UC Berkeley, and some lessons learned for Palestine solidarity work on campuses more generally.
Lastly, IJAN and Berkeley SJP co-facilitated a workshop called "Building and Sustaining Organizations," in which we shared IJAN and Berkeley SJP's approaches and principles for maintaining democratic and meaningful organizing. IJAN organizers were inspired by and excited to be a part of the Hampshire conference, and to have this opportunity to work towards making the national campus BDS movement more connected, informed, and accountable to the Palestinian call and movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.