Dear Community,
Announcing: Five days of learning with PASS
One way to ground and deepen our solidarity in moments of escalation is through shared study. Joining the call to escalate from those currently attempting to break the siege on Gaza, we are holding a five-day teach-in via this newsletter.
- Each day, subscribers will receive an email with a brief lesson on the history of resistance and solidarity in Palestine, as well as a mutual aid initiative on the ground in Gaza that you can contribute to — if your means allow, consider planning to make recurring contributions. Even when a ceasefire of some sort is effected, there will still be extraordinary need.
- We have also set up a Signal group as a space to connect, cross-pollinate, inform, and create with friends and neighbours in solidarity with Palestine, and in service of collective liberation everywhere — feel free to join us there to discuss and process what we are learning, and to stay connected to the PASS community moving forward. Click here to join the group, and click here to download Signal if you are new to the app.
Teach-In Curriculum:
🍓 Today: Orientation & Overview
🌊 Wednesday: Understanding Al-Aqsa
🥄 Thursday: Prisoners are the compass
🗝️ Friday: The ongoing Nakba
🫒🌲 Saturday: Movements in solidarity
As this week marks two years of horrific genocide, we can already see media and institutions repeating the same propaganda that has been used to justify and continue these atrocities, building on the foundation of a century of anti-Palestinian racism and Western chauvinism that allows the illegal occupation and apartheid state to persist.
To begin our learning journey, we have created a resource unpacking the misinformation and disinformation surrounding October 7th, 2023 to orient our learning and action this week. We hope this offering helps ground us in fierce and fearless truth-telling.
Debunking 10.7 Propaganda Resource
This action is dedicated to the memory of beloved martyr and teacher Refaat Al-Areer. Poet, professor, community organizer, and founder of We Are Not Numbers, Refaat Al-Areer raised a generation of Palestinian storytellers before being killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on December 6, 2023 with his brother and sister, as well as his siblings’ children. His legacy is carried forward in solidarity efforts such as The Sameer Project’s Refaat Al-Areer Camp in Central Gaza, the Refaat Al-Areer Mobile Library in what is now called Atlanta, and through what is now his most famous poem “If I Must Die”, which has been translated into over 100 different languages and read at protests and demonstrations across the world. We offer this teach-in as more water in the stream flowing from the source of his life and work.
lifeline4gaza.com
Today’s highlighted mutual aid effort is Lifeline4Gaza, which features vetted family fundraising campaigns. Every time you visit their homepage new campaigns are featured, so you can contribute to one, any or all of them and know that you are providing urgently needed support directly to a family in Gaza.
The world rises up for Gaza
Despite swirling public announcements about a potential ceasefire, devastating airstrikes in Gaza continue, the people are still besieged, settler violence escalates in the West Bank, and the leaders of the settler movement reiterate their intentions to erase Palestinians from their land at every opportunity.
While the people of Gaza assess and address the terms of any agreement made on their behalf, we must keep focused on the material conditions on the ground and follow their lead in our response. Our most pressing calls to action remain clear: show up in the streets, pressure our governments, wield our economic power through BDS, and contribute to efforts to meet basic life needs for those on the ground in Gaza through mutual aid and direct support.
Since its illegal interception by Israeli forces last Thursday, the Global Sumud Flotilla has ignited renewed energy to protests all over the world. Although the media has unsurprisingly downplayed and ignored hundreds of thousands, if not millions, participating in collective action for Palestine, we see and feel the power of the people!
GSF has just updated their website with information on which participants have been released, who is still detained, and how to take action in support. Meanwhile, we are keeping our eyes on the Conscience + Thousand Madleens fleet, who are now passing Alexandria en route to Gaza. You can check out our previous newsletter for more information on how to follow and support their mission.
To continue exerting pressure on our local governments to comply with international law and implement an arms embargo, and to close the loopholes currently allowing so-called Canada to continue sending weapons through the United States — use this toolkit from the Arms Embargo Now coalition to take action now!
Palestine Action Salt Spring 