Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine launched a phone banking campaign lasting from the past Sunday through Wednesday in Mary Church Terrell Main Library in response to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposed resolution to disapprove of the United States’ proposed foreign military sale to Israel. This campaign called on students to contact their respective senators to cosponsor this resolution.
Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine has been tabling in the Mary Church Terrell Main Library every day from Sunday to Wednesday providing information about the resolutions, as well as instructions for calling senators. Students could directly call their senator’s office, or email instead. If students are registered in Ohio, they could leave a voicemail to Sherrod Brown’s office instead of talking to the senator or office staff members directly.
SFP members are also holding a bake sale in conjunction with the phone banking campaign to continue fundraising for victims currently in Gaza.
Israel’s war on Gaza has, in the past months, spread to neighboring Lebanon, killing more than 40,000 people in Palestine and at least 3,000 in Lebanon. Israel has long been the leading cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid, including military assistance, amounting to $308 billion since the founding of the state. Since Oct. 7, the Biden administration has reportedly made more than 100 military aid transfers to Israel, making the U.S. the primary supporter of Israel’s continued attacks in Palestine and Lebanon.
Sanders introduced the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval in September 2024, proposing to block the sale of more than $20 billion in offensive U.S. weaponry to Israel. The resolution lists the variety of all the weapons, equipment, and other funding contained in the sale, including additional Joint Direct Attack Munitions, 120mm High Explosive mortar cartridges, 50 new F-151A aircrafts, associated weapons, and other related elements of logistics and program support. The Senate will vote on the resolutions next week.
“It’s the first time in U.S. history that it’s a possibility,” College fourth-year and SFP Leader Pelham Curtis said. “It is really important to get people to call their senators, call their representatives and tell them to support the disapproval of the resolution.”
College fourth-year and organizer for SFP Olivia Wohlgemuth echoed the importance of this campaign.
“It’s the first time in history that there would even be an opportunity for Congress to directly vote on military sale to Israel,” Wohlgemuth said. “Students have direct power as constituents and registered voters.”
Wohlgemuth added that since so many students are registered to vote in Ohio, many have been calling Senator Sherrod Brown’s office. She believes the accumulation of voicemails to his office could have a greater impact.
Students have reportedly responded positively.
“You can really hear the passion in people’s voices even if we give them a script,” College second-year Julia Xu said. “While the phone banking script that we provide people does list certain facts like the number of people killed and the specific details about the weapons that the U.S. supplies, it’s not the most important part. It’s about having a mass amount of people express their support for something and that’s the power of phone banking.”
When asked about the impact of the past week’s election results, both Curtis and Wohlgemuth reemphasized the significance of phone banking, but expressed that SFP and students’ advocacy work does not end there.
“We as SFP don’t put a lot of faith in electoral politics,” Curtis said. “We have seen historically, especially in the past year, that appealing to our representatives, appealing to our elected officials, hasn’t always been the most effective, and I think that’s really scary and hard, and obviously when there’s an opportunity like this to push on them in this way, it is our responsibility to do that.”
Wohlgemuth also said that the importance of the effort, regardless of whether or not the bill passes.
“Even if this resolution does not pass in Senate, it’s important for senators to know that we’re watching and observing what they do, so if they don’t pass this resolution, then that’s something that we saw them do, and I think it’s important for them to know that those eyes are on them,” Wohlgemuth said.
