The video is produced by Noura Erakat, a Palestinian attorney and activist who is an assistant professor of legal studies, worldwide studies and human rights at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. She came up with the idea in the summer of 2014, when the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. after the shooting death of Michael Brown was unfolding at the same time as the Israel-Gaza conflict.
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Following the cancellation, the R&B legend and former Fugees member told her fans on Facebook that she would not perform for Israelis in Tel-Aviv because she was unable to also perform for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“She believes in liberation for all people and she respects the organic nature of the messaging on this movement”, Erakat said.
“When I see you, I see us”, is the message put forward by an alliance of Black and Palestinian artists and activists battling police brutality and mass incarceration from Ms. Lauryn Hill, Alice Walker and Angela Davis to Remi Kanazi, Yousef Erakat and Rafeef Ziadah.
Here were two groups of people dealing with completely different historical trajectories, but both which resulted in a process of dehumanization that criminalized them and that subject their bodies as expendable. “Not only were their lives more vulnerable and disposable, but that even in their death, they were blamed for their own death”, reported Al Jazeera English.
According to material provided by organisers, the short video is “intended for social media circulation and features Black and Palestinian notables expressing cross-movement solidarity”.
Black and Palestinian activists, artists and intellectuals released a video Wednesday that draws parallels between their shared struggles against state violence, reaffirming a long legacy of Black-Palestinian solidarity.
Black-Palestinian solidarity: a choice of life and resistance.
Palestinians have spoken out passionately against racist police violence in Ferguson and Baltimore as black people have vehemently stood up in defense of Rasmeah Odeh.
In that statement, they put Zionism in the same category as anti-Blackness and white supremacy, which they see as the force behind the systematic racism against Blacks in the U.S as well as Africans and Palestinians in Israeli-controlled land.
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Dozens of renowned artists and activists are featured in an explosive new video that makes explicit the connections between black and Palestinian suffering under state violence and oppresssion. She spoke with old Al Jazeera recently.
