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MEDIA ALERT For Immediate Release Contact: Chapter Coordinator -
(872) 395-8048, [email protected] When: Friday, January 20, 2016 Where: Chicago What: BLMChi Statement on #CancelPinkwashing
BLMChi Statement on #CancelPinkwashing 1/20/16 - In the midst of recent escalations, we must offer clarity: Black Lives Matter Chicago fully honors and endorses the #cancelpinkwashing demands upon the National LGBTQ Task Force, brought by Tarab NYC and co-resisting collectives and organizations, to divest from the violence, ignorance and false “inclusion” of settler colonial pinkwashing in the name of a “wider” bridge. To avert our eyes, to choose silence, would come at too great an expense. We understand such silence to be a bringer of death. And under no circumstances can we corroborate the material and social death of Palestinian Lives, Afro-Palestinian Lives - of all gender identities, sexualities and faith practices - within Gaza, the West Bank, occupied Jerusalem, historic 1948 Palestine and throughout the diaspora. They/We navigate heavily surveilled and detained realities on tightropes. They/We are expected to be grateful to those that itemize their/our pain to strengthen existing norms. As is routine for too many souls across the globe, They/We must negotiate oppressions as a provision of harm reduction and triage. As They/We all struggle to achieve healing, safety and autonomy in our own lives, families and communities, let us commit to mobilize ourselves and honor the self-determined struggles of Palestine so as to divest from the violence of the Occupation. Black & Palestinian Lives depend on it.” THIS IS A CRITICAL STANCE, NOT JUST A “CRITIQUE”. PLEASE CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING RESOURCES:
PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel (Revised July 2014)
Reel Solidarity: Black Queer Reflections on Palestine and BDS
VIDEO: Solidarity Demonstration in Nazareth : Ferguson to Palestine (Dream Defenders)
African-Palestinian community’s deep roots in liberation struggle (The Electronic Intifada)
The crisis of solidarity: Using ‘’their plight” to score political points (Random Shelling)
VIDEO: Sexual Discourses in the Zionist Project (Dean Spade)
The #BlackLivesMatter Haggadah Supplement (Jews for Racial & Economic Justice)
With Power and Love, BLMChi
