Wednesday 26th June 5pm-6.30pm, online
A Zoom link will be sent to registered attendees before the event
The Palestinian struggle for national self-determination has long resonated with justice struggles around the world, especially among peoples with experiences and histories of being subject to colonial rule and racial domination. This is seen, for example, in the solidarity between indigenous peoples across the world resisting colonialism and genocide and the long history of Black-Palestinian solidarity against racist oppression, apartheid and militarised occupation. At a time when new collectives of sociologists in solidarity with Palestine have emerged (including ours) and as students occupy and protest against their universities complicity in the Western-backed Israeli genocide, we would like to reflect together about what we can learn from past and ongoing networks of solidarity that struggle against the erasure of Palestine and Palestinians and which seek to imagine and practice liberated futures. Engaging deeply with the call of Lilla Watson and Aboriginal Rights in Queensland, Australia: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together, we ask:
How does Palestine relate to other struggles against dehumanisation, racism and dispossession? How does solidarity travel from the translocal to the transnational to the global?
What can we learn from the history of political and intellectual relationships between Palestinian activists and other anti-imperialist thinkers and groups across different regions of the world?
What does solidarity look like in the eyes of new generations of Palestinians and other young people across the world resisting colonialism, racism and militarisation?
What obstacles do we face in building a sustainable solidarity movement with Palestinians in the current political, policy, and legal landscape? What relations and practices do we need to create and sustain to do effective solidarity work?
Panel:
Agata Lisiak, Associate Professor of Migration Studies (Bard College Berlin)
Ala Sirriyeh, Senior Lecturer in Sociology (Lancaster University)
Manal Massalha, urban ethnographer and documentary photographer
Neve Gordon, Vice President BRISMES and Professor of International Law (QMUL)
Yara, Palestine Youth Movement
Chair:
Madeline-Sophie Abbas, Senior Lecturer in Sociology (Lancaster University)
Organised by Sociologists in Solidarity with Palestinians
Image: Cardiff Solidarity for Palestine protest, 21 October 2023, Owen Blacker, shared under Creative Commons Licence from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139360401
