High school and college students along with older activists and other outraged area residents responded strongly to the brutal U.S.-backed Israeli attack on Gaza in December and January with large weekly protest actions at a heavily trafficked intersection in San José, Calif., and with smaller actions and vigils at other locations.
|
Well over 1,000 people turned out in the course of the protest campaign. Some were participating in demonstrations for the first time. Several spirited marches through Santana Row, a nearby shopping mall, highlighted the protests.
On Feb. 5, the Israel Consul General for the Pacific Northwest, Avika Tor, was invited to speak at San José State University. The youth and other community members who had been tirelessly demonstrating with justifiable rage against the massacre in Gaza took action.
Supporters of Palestine mobilized in strength and packed the small room that had been reserved for the event, prompting the university to offer a larger nearby room. The hostile reception to Tor’s blatant lies and twisting of facts forced the organizers of the event to cut off further questions and comments and close the meeting.
New South Bay ANSWER chapter
In the aftermath of the December-January protests, a group of students and youth, together with several veteran San José activists and San Francisco ANSWER youth organizers, decided in February to form an ANSWER chapter.
The new group’s current focus is building participation in the March 21 “Occupation Is a Crime” mass demonstration in San Francisco. A national March on the Pentagon will take place in Washington, D.C., on that date.
On Feb. 18, the Muslim Students Association at SJSU sponsored an educational forum on Gaza featuring Karimah Al-Helew, a student activist at SJSU and member of MSA and South Bay ANSWER; Richard Becker, western regional coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition; and ANSWER organizer Mazda Majidi.
The speakers detailed the devastation visited upon Gaza by the Israeli bombing and blockade. The audience was offered a historical account of the origins of Zionism as a colonial project allied to the British and U.S. imperialist drive to control the huge oil reserves and other resources of the Middle East. Seventy students and community members attended, with many joining the lively discussion that followed the presentations.
South Bay ANSWER youth helped out with security, sign-ups, staffing the ANSWER table, chairing, speaking, setup, and cleanup. Everyone participated in the outreach leading up to the event by postering, flyering, talking with people and sending announcements out online.
Most recently, on Feb. 26, a talk and multimedia presentation by Barbara Lubin of the Middle East Children’s Alliance was featured at another educational forum at SJSU. Lubin, a long-time friend of the ANSWER Coalition who had just returned from Gaza, gave a powerful presentation featuring personal testimony and graphic images of the horrific destruction of Gaza and the civilian casualties of the Israeli bombing and shelling.
The meeting attracted more than 100 students and community members and was co-sponsored by the Student Association for Middle Eastern Studies, SJSU MSA, MECA, South Bay Mobilization and the San José Peace and Justice Center. ANSWER activists made sure that everyone in the audience was informed of the March 21 mobilization and other events marking the sixth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq.
To find out more about the March 21 mobilization in San Francisco, click here. For information on the March on the Pentagon and other actions taking place around the country on March 21, click here.
To find out how to get involved with ANSWER South Bay, please email [email protected].
