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george washington university
What I Learned at a Gaza Solidarity Encampment in the Heart of the Beast
We are most powerful when we dismantle the systems designed to isolate, disconnect, and distract us from uniting against the genocide in Gaza.
Jul 24, 2024
Being in Washington, D.C., the heart of the beast, meant that establishing and maintaining our encampment was a formidable task. Situated just a 15-minute walk from the State Department and the White House, we were perpetually under surveillance. Yet, it was precisely for this reason that we needed to be there—to confront the institutions that uphold the empire. No bomb falls in Gaza without the State Department's consent; no child is maimed by airstrikes without the White House's approval. Just around the corner, the architects of genocide convened to plan further carnage against my people in Gaza.
The camaraderie forged at the encampment was unforgettable. Time seemed to stretch and warp—two weeks felt like months, even years. In our modern world, uniting in large numbers for a powerful cause such as Palestinian liberation is rare. At the George Washington University encampment, friendships and solidarity blossomed quickly. Everyone understood that daily routines were distractions from what truly mattered: standing up for Gaza, for Palestine, against the relentless and systematic violence of a depraved Zionist state intent on massacring an innocent population, punishing them for their mere existence.
I am from Gaza. Dozens of my relatives have been murdered by the Israeli regime. I could never have imagined the scenes we experienced at Shohada' Square (Martyr's Square), our name for the "University Yard" where our encampment stood.
Gaza, and by extension our encampment, taught us that true liberation is achieved by consistently prioritizing the group's welfare over individual gain.
After enduring the struggle for a free Palestine alone for most of my life, the encampment finally gave me a family of individuals who understood that Gaza's plight is an existential issue that we must all attend to. For the first time in almost a decade of living in North America, I felt at home. We did not have to feign a sense of normalcy, nor did we shy away from challenging the state responsible for the most live-streamed genocide in human history. So the tents were put up, adorned with Palestinian flags and banners. Every day, the air was thick with the scent of shared meals and the hum of voices engaged in discussion. The encampment was not just a group of individuals; it represented a collective force bound by a shared struggle and an unbreakable commitment to Palestinian liberation.
For this, university president Ellen Granberg and Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. ordered the local police department to raid our encampment, to brutalize and vigorously pepper spray the students and supportive community. All because they dared to be unwavering in their demand for the liberation of Palestine.
The support from our local D.C. and extended DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia area) community, especially in the early days of the encampment, revealed the unbreakable interconnectedness of our fight. This principle must guide every action and decision, especially in moments of opportunity and peril. Our time at the encampment revealed a profound truth: We are most powerful when we dismantle the systems designed to isolate, disconnect, and distract us from uniting against the genocide in Gaza. During our two weeks together, we forged bonds that transcended the constraints of a system fixated on capital over humanity. We discovered a deeper, radical connection that challenges these structures.
Contrary to the "outside agitator" narrative propagated by mainstream media, the encampment unveiled the geographic and psychological divisions meant to keep us apart. These divisions prevent us from fully embracing and fighting for each other's freedom and true liberation. The encampment stands for Gaza, for Palestine, and for the liberation of Palestinians from settler-colonial hegemony. It is the heart of our struggle. It symbolizes a broader fight for collective liberation and the realization that a better future is attainable for everyone. Each day at the encampment was dedicated to thought, learning, exchanging ideas, and sustaining one another.
This movement was never confined to students alone. At George Washington University, our supportive D.C. and extended DMV community had the opportunity to bolster our cause for Palestinian liberation. Whether or not everyone fully grasped this cause as part of our larger struggle, they profoundly understood it when they united to bring it to life. The encampment taught us the imperative of challenging the systems facilitating the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
As committed citizens and active participants in the fight for collective liberation, we must balance the line between reasonable risk and self-preservation. Prioritizing individual safety and comfort over collective sacrifice is the path most tread because it is what we are taught. This mindset allowed the university to call in a brutal Metropolitan Police force to terrorize, beat, and pepper spray students and community members. President Granbeg, the complicit university administration, and Mayor Bowser demonstrated their priority of maintaining genocidal policies over divesting from them.
Simply put, the encampment showed that our strength as a collective lies in our numbers, and our power is magnified when we act in unison. We must continually reflect on and challenge how often we prioritize personal comfort over the collective good. This is how we honor the sacrifices made by my people and family in Gaza. Gaza, and by extension our encampment, taught us that true liberation is achieved by consistently prioritizing the group's welfare over individual gain.
Within the encampment, people understood that they are united in this struggle. As a Palestinian from Gaza, I have come to understand the rationale behind prioritizing sacrifice for Palestine. This is not a symbolic point or an abstract act of courage but a settled understanding developed over the last nine months that my life is no more valuable than any life lost or enduring in Gaza. As a Palestinian in the diaspora, the student encampments represented the forefront of our opposition to imperialism and colonialism in the U.S., embodying the spirit of our fight. We must look past a rudimentary view of our student movement as a focal point but rather understand what the students did was intertwined with the local community that understood the importance of opposing imperialism from within its place of origin.
Our struggle is one, our liberation is intertwined, and with our combined fights and sacrifices we will soon see a free Palestine, inshAllah.
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In First, Trump Ekes Ahead of Clinton in New National Poll
Latest Rasmussen survey finds that in Clinton-Trump matchup, GOP candidate would claim 15 percent of Democratic voters
May 02, 2016
As the presidential nominating contests enter their final stretch, a troubling new trend has developed for Democratic voters. Recent polling indicates that Hillary Clinton may be losing her lead over Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
According to the new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, released on Monday, the New York billionaire would defeat the former secretary of state 41 to 39 percent in a hypothetical matchup.
According to the survey, which was conducted from April 27 to 28 among 1,000 likely voters:
Trump now has the support of 73% of Republicans, while 77% of Democrats back Clinton. But Trump picks up 15% of Democrats, while just eight percent (8%) of GOP voters prefer Clinton, given this matchup. Republicans are twice as likely to prefer another candidate.
Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Trump leads 37% to 31%, but 23% like another candidate. Nine percent (9%) are undecided.
The results mark the first time since October that Trump has led Clinton in the Rasmussen poll while the latest RealClearPolitics average shows Clinton ahead of Trump by 7.3 percent.
These findings follow the George Washington University Battleground Poll last week, which found Clinton leading Trump by just 3 percentage points. Both surveys had a margin of error of roughly 3 points.
Underscoring both candidates' consistently low favorability ratings, Rasmussen also reported that nearly a quarter of voters said they would "opt-out" of a Clinton-Trump race, either by voting for another candidate (16 percent) or staying home (6 percent).
Rasmussen states that Clinton's narrow lead among under-40 voters (38 to Trump's 32 percent) "suggests that younger voters will be a big target in the upcoming campaigning."
This "traditionally...reliable Democratic group," as the pollster put it, has heretofore resoundingly backed Sen. Bernie Sanders in this race, and wooing youth voters is a challenge currently facing the Clinton campaign.
The Rasmussen poll comes one day ahead of the Indiana primary, which could prove to be a tight race for both parties. An NBC News/Wall Street, Journal/Marist poll, released Sunday found that Trump currently holds a seven-point lead over Clinton among Hoosier State voters.
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King Obama, His Royal Court, and the TPP
Jun 25, 2015
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - a global corporate noose around U.S. local, state, and national sovereignty - narrowly passed a major procedural hurdle in the Congress by gaining "fast track" status. This term "fast track" is a euphemism for your members of Congress - senators and representatives - handcuffing themselves, so as to prevent any amendments or adequate debate before the final vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership - another euphemism that is used to avoid the word "treaty," which would require ratification by two-thirds of the Senate. This anti-democratic process is being pushed by "King Obama" and his royal court.
Make no mistake. If this was only a trade treaty - reducing tariffs, quotas, and the like - it would not be so controversial. Yet, the corporate-indentured politicians keep calling this gigantic treaty with thirty chapters, of which only five relate to traditional trade issues, a trade agreement instead of a treaty. The other twenty-four chapters, if passed as they are, will have serious impacts on your livelihoods as workers and consumers, as well as your air, water, food, and medicines
The reason I call President Obama "King Obama" in this case is that he, and his massive corporate lobbies (royal court), have sought to circumvent the checks and balances system that is the very bedrock of our government. They have severely weakened the independence of the primary branch of our government - the Congress--and fought off any court challenges with medieval defenses, such as no American citizen has any standing to sue for harm done by such treaties or the subject is a political, not judicial, matter.
Only corporations, astonishingly enough, are entitled to sue the U.S. government for any alleged harm to their profits from health, safety or other regulations in secret tribunals that operate as offshore kangaroo courts, not in open courts.
President Obama has weakened two branches of our government in favor of the third, which is currently his executive branch that has secret negotiations with 11 other nations, some of which are brutal regimes.
Allowing foreign investors (aka corporations) to bypass our courts and sue the U.S. government (aka the taxpayers) for money damages before secret outside tribunals is considered unconstitutional by many, including Alan Morrison, a constitutional law specialist and litigator now at George Washington University Law School.
In the mid-nineties, I opposed the creation of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. President Obama and some members of Congress say that the TPP will be different from NAFTA and the WTO, but I doubt that they have read the entire draft of the TPP. They're relying on summary memos by the U.S. Trade Office and corporate lawyers, for example, drug companies that sugarcoat the complex monopolistic extension of the pharmaceutical patents and how this will result in higher prices for your medicines.
I challenge President Obama to state publically that he has read the entire TPP. Even a benign monarch would do this for his/her trusting subjects.
Inside these hundreds of pages of cross-references and repeals of conflicting existing laws is the central subversion, subordinating our protective laws for labor, consumers, and the environment (impersonally called "non-tariff trader barriers") to the supremacy of international global commercial traffic.
One very recent example - by no means the worst possible - just occurred. After Congress passed a popular "country-of-origin" labeling requirement on meat packages sold in supermarkets, Brazil and Mexico, both exporters of meat to the U.S.A, challenged this U.S. law in a secret (yes, literally secret in all respects) tribunal in Geneva under the World Trade Organization Treaty. Brazil and Mexico won this legal challenge.
"Many Americans will be shocked that the WTO can order our government to deny U.S. consumers the basic information about where their food comes from and that if the information policy is not gutted, we could face millions in sanctions every year," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "Today's ruling spotlights how these so-called 'trade' deals are packed with non-trade provisions that threaten our most basic rights, such as even knowing the source and safety of what's on our dinner plate." A May 2013 survey by the Consumer Federation of America found that 90% of adult Americans favored this "country-of-origin" requirement.
Fearing billions of dollars in penalties, the U.S. Congress is racing to repeal its own law. See how the noose works: foreign countries trying to pull down our higher standards can take conflicts to secret tribunals with three trade judges, who also have corporate clients and can say to the U.S., "Get rid of your protections or pay billions of dollars in tribute."
The same noose can choke efforts by the U.S. to upgrade our health, safety, and economic rights. Had air bags been proposed by the U.S. Department of Transportation under today's global trade uber alles regimes, the proposal would have had to go to a harmonization committee of the WTO's signatory countries that would sandpaper or reject this life-saving technology. Or if the U.S. went it alone, it would expose itself to repeal or pay by car-exporting nations.
For ten reasons why the TPP is a bad idea for our country and the world see my recent Common Dreamscolumn.
If this all sounds so outrageous as to strain credulity, go beneath the tip of this iceberg and visit: Global Trade Warch and Flush the TPP. Then, get ready for the battle over the TPP itself in the late autumn. The following are three examples of how to build resistance to an international problem in your local communities.
First, send the legislators who supported the fast track handcuffs a CITIZENS' SUMMONS to appear at a town meeting where you, not they, present the agenda. If the lawmakers think 500 or more determined people will show up, it is very likely they will relent and meet with you. The unions and other groups working to stop the TPP around the country can get their people to attend these town meetings. August is the congressional recess month. The senators and representative will have no excuse to avoid a town meeting with their constituents. For a list of those legislators who need to be focused on, visit "Stop Fast Track".
Second, hustle together some modest money from groups and individuals, rent an empty storefront, plaster the windows with large signs, and start a rumble of civic resistance in all directions. Politicians sometimes shrug off the warnings of losing contributions from unions. What politicians do fear is their inability to control groups of resurgent voters indeterminately expanding from inside their district or state.
Since opposition to TPP reflects a Left-Right alliance in Congress and back home, store fronts spell real worry for politicians. They should worry because they chose not to do their homework for their home country.
Third, hold rallies designed to attract, collectively, hundreds or thousands of people around the country. These rallies could have an array of high-profile speakers and entertainers, as well as workers who have been harmed by past so-called trade agreements. Rallies can bring in new people and start the process of galvanizing them about the many problems with the TPP.
Remember, 75 percent of Americans think that the TPP should be rejected or delayed according to a bipartisan poll from the Wall Street Journal. People know what these "pull-down," misnamed trade agreements have done in their own communities. Start organizing today to win tomorrow!
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