On May 29, 1989, Audre Lorde used her opportunity as Oberlin College’s commencement speaker to rouse the graduating class into action on behalf of the Palestinian people. She urged them to protest and appeal to their congresspeople, impressing that for the Palestinian people, recognition of their rights was not “altruism, it is survival.”
Now, in 2024, we are watching millions of Palestinians suffer at the hands of the Israeli government. Since Oct. 7, 2023, over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Via airstrikes and denial of food, water, fuel, and other aid from entering Gaza, Palestinians have struggled to survive in horrible conditions. It is because of this, and in acknowledgment of the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people since the founding of the Israeli state in 1948, that we urge Black students and alumni to sign this petition in solidarity with Students for a Free Palestine and Palestinian people and against the colonial project of Israel.
The anti-racist struggle is not confined to the U.S. or to Black people. Millions of human beings all over the world all fight one common enemy — the dehumanization that justifies colonial exploitation. This battle was fought in Selma, AL, just like it was fought in Sharpeville, South Africa. This battle continues to be fought in the West Bank and in Gaza.
Black and Palestinian solidarity is also a longstanding tradition in the collective fight against oppression, racism, and colonialism. During the June 1967 war, after Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza among other territories, Black activists saw Israel’s conquest as an imperial parallel to the violence that many Black communities were facing, as well as to U.S. imperialism in Vietnam during the war. This prompted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a coordinated youth-led nonviolent organization dedicated to combating segregation and other forms of racism, to issue a document titled the “Palestine Issue,” which expanded on how Zionism was an imperial endeavor sustained by white colonial powers such as the U.S. and parts of Europe. The Black Panther Party also extended its solidarity to the Palestinian resistance, uniting under their common struggle against colonialism and hoping that they could join together against their plights. Now, in 2024, the movement for Black liberation must attack all iterations of racism across all its specific geographies. In 1984, Black students in Oberlin fervently protested Apartheid in South Africa because they saw how the colonial violence taking place an ocean away impacted their lives here in the United States. We must now recognize how the travesties against Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli settler state threaten to undo the work that thousands of Black freedom fighters dedicated their lives to over the course of history. Racial justice is not limited to a specific country, identity group, or culture. The anti-racist struggle has always been a global struggle. It has always been a battle to ensure that every living person is recognized as a human being.
The greatest minds of the Black radical tradition have all insisted on recognizing their responsibility to demand the same dignities for all people living under the yoke of racism and colonial violence. This is why Angela Davis has spent her career advocating for an end to Apartheid both in South Africa and in Palestine. This is why Malcolm X in 1964 released the essay “Zionist Logic” and voiced his critique of colonialism and Zionism and detailed its connection to the Black struggle. This is why an article titled “Statement in Solidarity with the Palestinian People of Gaza” detailing support of Palestine was signed by Angela Davis, Gina Dent, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and others. They understood that if they restricted their activism only to American soil, their work would be inauthentic. At this moment, we must do the same. We are, at best, inconsistent if we claim to be against racism and actively turn a deaf ear to the devastation currently raining down on millions of innocent human beings — purely because of who they are as a people. If our political activism and advocacy is only for Black liberation, or only for Black liberation in the U.S., then what we’re after is only (self-interested) survival, not a future world without racism and colonial domination. We are no different from Palestinians. We are no more deserving of our freedom, our autonomy, our lives than Palestinians. In this moment of an unfolding genocide in Gaza, we must work and toil and speak out as hard as we did for George Floyd in Minneapolis or Michael Brown in Ferguson. We must demand justice for Kinnan Abdalhamid, Taseen Ali Ahmad, and Hisham Awartini — three college students who were shot in Vermont for speaking Arabic and wearing their keffiyehs — as if it were three Black boys who were shot for having the audacity to wear their skin proudly.
Systems of oppression and violence reward us for passively standing by. It makes sense for us to choose to do nothing, to take the position of the bystander in response to the genocide in Gaza. But justice calls us to do otherwise, to make the difficult choice, the one that doesn’t make sense. If it seems rational to remain silent, then we must be irrational. We all see that Israel’s genocide right now is a complete and utter stain on humanity’s history. We understand that those in power have everything to lose by demanding justice. But activism when it is expedient is not activism. In Mary Church Terrell’s own words, we must “lift as we climb” so we don’t become the very oppressors we fight against. Of course we would do everything we could to save innocent human beings in Gaza if it came at no cost. But again, activism when it is expedient is not activism. If all of us are willing to shoulder the cost of standing with our Palestinian sisters and brothers in this moment of their gravest oppression, then we will find strength in solidarity.
We must urge the Oberlin Black community to speak out for Palestinian freedom and encourage our communities and institutions to do the same. We make this statement as Black Oberlin students and alumni in solidarity with Palestinian people. We express our profound grief and outrage at the devastating violence inflicted by the state of Israel upon Gaza. As we speak, Israel’s actions have resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
We are coming together to demand the following:
Oberlin’s administration publicly supports the plea for an immediate ceasefire and the cessation of the occupation of Palestine.
Oberlin’s administration divests from companies that support the Israeli Occupation Forces and its oppressive practices, including apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.
Oberlin’s administration unequivocally rejects the narrative that supporting Palestinian rights or endorsing the political discourse of Palestinians equates to antisemitism or “support for terrorism.”
Oberlin’s administration upholds the freedom of speech for students, faculty, staff, and student organizations by the institutional policies of our respective colleges.
The work does not just stop in Oberlin. We must call on our Black youth, elders, students, writers, and workers to educate themselves on Palestinians and what is happening in Gaza. These demands and our commitment to Black and Palestinian solidarity stand resilient against any efforts to silence or undermine us. We will confront these challenges as one, and together, we will prevail.
This letter is written by Nikki Keating, OC ‘25, and Isaiah Johnson, OC ’27.
To sign this open letter, visit here.
