Dear Colleagues and Friends,
We are writing to request your support and solidarity for the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED), the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and Professor Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi and her students at San Francisco State University. In the past few weeks, both groups have been subjected to an organized smear campaign by Tammi Benjamin and AMCHA Initiative (http://www.amchainitiative.org), who have been systematically attacking pro-Palestinian organizing on campuses under the false charges that they are “anti-Semitic,” by using the facile analysis that Zionism = Judaism.
On November 7th, AMED co-sponsored an event organized by GUPS and the Cesar Chavez Student Center titled “ We Speak for Ourselves: Honoring our Forbearers.” The event commemorated the 6thanniversary of the Palestinian Cultural Mural honoring the late Professor Edward Said, alongside the other icons of global resistance to colonialism and struggles for liberation and freedom. The event, which included a number of panels, discussions, and artistic interventions, was highly successful, drawing a large audience from across a variety of disciplines and from inside and outside of the SFSU community.
At the event, students made links between indigenous and anti-racist struggles in a variety of contexts, drawing on San Francisco State University’s historic role as a place of Third World anti-racist solidarity, particularly through its college of Ethnic Studies. Among the many activities that took place at Malcolm X Plaza, students drew two stencils. One included an image of Leila Khaled, the popular icon that today represents anti-colonial feminist resistance among Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike. The other was made by Indigenous activists for an event marking the anniversary of genocide in the Americas on October 14, 2013. Posted on the Native American Indian Network as the Second Annual ‘My HEROES Have Always Killed Colonizers: Stories of Global Indigenous REZistance,’ the stencil included the text “MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS KILLED COLONIZERS.”
Importantly, this message was part of a broader narrative aimed at countering the depiction of the “Indigenous warrior who has been labeled a terrorist, unpatriotic, and/or savage while defending the land, the people, and our traditional ways.” Both stencils raised awareness of indigenous and anti-colonial struggles and resistance. However, they were both taken out of context and distorted as a pretext in Benjamin’s larger crusade to shut down Palestinian programming, students and professors across the state of California.
Claiming, falsely, that this was “an anti-Semitic on-campus activity that encourages students to glorify the murder of Jews,” Tammi Benjamin and AMCHA Initiative have made unfounded and extremely troubling accusations. Capitalizing on a general unawareness of anti-colonial histories, they have used these examples to launch attacks against the Palestinian students and the AMED program, as well as to target individual professors and activists and, in particular, Palestinian Professor Rabab Abdulhadi. Taking the statements and icons of struggle and resistance out of context, Benjamin hoisted charges of anti-Semitism that were inappropriate, offensive and false, enabled only through a larger cultural climate of Islamophobia and a general lack of knowledge about Palestinian struggles for dignity and justice.
The targeting of anti-racist and anti-colonial pedagogy and scholarship, programs, initiatives, and events is of course not an isolated incident but is a part and parcel of a larger campaign to silence, demonize, and delegitimize pro-Palestinian and Indigenous activisms throughout U.S. University campuses.
As women of color, Indigenous, anti-racist and queer feminists committed to an anti-racist, anti-colonial solidarity politics, we refuse to remain silent while our movements and communities are slandered. For, as our rich histories of struggle teach us, an attack upon one of us is an attack upon us all.
Intimidation campaigns such as the one that has been launched by Tammi Benjamin and the AMCHA initiative, however, require the mobilizations and solidarity of our friends and allies from all backgrounds. We thus write urging you to do any or all of the following:
1. We request that you sign this letter in support of the AMED program and the GUPS at San Francisco State University. Please add affiliation to your name if possible. (To do so email us at: JusticeForAmedSfsu@gmail.com)
2. Please sign the following petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/president-leslie-wong-condemn-baseless-attack-against-gups-and-amed?share_id=ZsPrJfQTtr&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
3. Call the office of the SFSU President Leslie E Wong and express your support for GUPS and AMED and rejection of the false accusations by Tammi Benjamin and AMCHA. (Telephone: (415) 338-1381; Email: president@sfsu.edu) To read Dr. Wong’s troubling statement, please see http://president.sfsu.edu/.
4. If you work in an academic institution or community organization, please consider organizing a panel that addresses issues relating to the silencing of academics and students who speak on Palestinian and Indigenous anti-colonial struggles.
5. If you wish to be in touch with the authors of this letter, please feel free to email us at (JusticeForAmedSfsu@gmail.com)
In Solidarity,
Justice for AMED