June 17, 2024
From Detroit to
Cleveland to Gaza, and everywhere in between, we must fight for a world built
on equal rights, freedom from oppression, and human dignity for all people. In
the words of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until
everybody’s free.” The collective liberation of oppressed people everywhere is
intertwined, and we must come together to fight for justice at home and around
the world.
In this spirit,
it has been deeply inspiring to see organizations focused on Black liberation,
from the NAACP to the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church to The King Center, embrace the cause of Palestinian human rights. All
of these groups have called for a cease-fire in Gaza—and recently, the NAACP,
the nation’s leading civil rights organization, went a step further, urging the
Biden administration to stop weapons shipments to Israel. This courageous
declaration by the NAACP is the latest example of the shared struggle for Black
and Palestinian liberation.
When we come
together in solidarity to build a multi-racial, cross-faith, multi-generational
movement, we realize our power to bend the arc of the moral universe. Just as
our civil rights leaders who came before us did, we all have a moral
responsibility to speak out against injustice everywhere and dismantle systemic
racism, white supremacy, and all systems of oppression.
We also have to
unite because our struggles are so interconnected; for instance, according to
US Census Bureau estimates, the poverty rate is 33.8 percent in Detroit and
31.8 percent in Cleveland—two of the highest rates among America’s largest
cities. In a country that wastes trillions of dollars on war while continuing
to defund our social safety net, we know that poverty is a policy choice. Our
communities often wonder why elected officials are not addressing this crisis
with the urgency it deserves. When we look at our politicians’ indifference to
the suffering here in America, we can understand their indifference to the
atrocities we are witnessing unfold every day in Gaza.
If our elected
leaders can see what is happening in the communities they claim to represent,
where people sleep on the streets and children drink contaminated water; if
they can see babies in America going to bed hungry, and not act, it’s no
surprise that they can also ignore the starving babies in Gaza. If our elected
leaders will stand by and allow American police to brutalize Black and brown
people in our communities, it makes sense that they also excuse the Israeli
forces that train many of them.
So how can we
change this?
Despite being
built to uphold white supremacy and maintain the status quo, our government has
always been an institution that responds to external pressure. During the
height of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, there was clarity
among activists about the need to realize Black liberation and force public
policy to protect Black lives. The powerful in Washington didn’t just wake up
one day and decide to end Jim Crow. The people forced the passage of civil
rights legislation by marching, boycotting, and leading civil disobedience,
relentlessly fighting for clear policy demands until they were passed by
Congress and signed into law by the president.
We must have the
courage to raise our collective voice again on the frontlines of justice. Just
as we march in defense of Black lives and against police brutality in our own
country, we now march for Palestinian lives, demanding that our own government
stop funding genocide.
Unfortunately,
the three major evils the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned of—racism,
poverty, and war—are still raging and are all linked. Since October, Israeli
forces have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 15,000
children, and more than 85,000 people have been injured. They have killed at
least 548 Palestinians, including more than 135 children, in the West Bank. The
consensus of the international community is clear: The Israeli government is
committing crimes against humanity that not only constitute the crime of
apartheid, or racist oppression and segregation, but also violate the Genocide
Convention and international law. South Africa, after defeating US-backed
apartheid, has now become a voice for Palestinians at the International Court
of Justice to stop this genocide, highlighting the need for communities seeking
justice to come together in solidarity.
King said that
“a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Since 1948, the US has approved more than $141 billion in weapons to the
Israeli government as it continues to carry out ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinian people. Just imagine what $141 billion invested in our communities
could do instead. By one estimate, it would take about $177 billion to lift
every American out of poverty.
Why is it that
our country always has enough money to bomb people, but never enough to provide
people with health care, housing, and enough food to feed their families? Year
after year elected officials tell us that there is no money to invest in our
communities, universal healthcare, or reparations, only to turn around and pass
yet another record-breaking military budget—this year it topped $886
billion—and send tens of billions more of our tax dollars to Israel to fund
this death and destruction.
It is past time
to end the billions of dollars of funding we send to the Israeli government and
to demand human dignity for all people. We must join together as a multiracial,
multifaith, multigenerational coalition for change. King reminds us, “True peace
is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.” The path
forward to a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis must include
ending the genocide in Gaza, lifting the blockade, facilitating the release of
hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians, ending the occupation, and
dismantling the racist apartheid system. It is only then that Palestinians and
Israelis can peacefully coexist in their homeland with equal rights, safety,
and freedom.
The movement
that forces our government to stop funding endless war is the same movement
demanding universal healthcare, housing for all, reparations, and clean air and
water. The same students, teachers, labor leaders, and community activists who
are organizing for a permanent cease-fire are also organizing for the
liberation of all people, including Black liberation. This moment calls for
uncompromising moral clarity. History will remember those who took a stand to
demand that our government invests in life, not death.
This is that
movement, and we are those people.
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