Saturday, March 23 from 1-2:30pm PT. The link will be sent to registrants by email on Saturday morning. Please register here.
As part of the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s weeks of action in the month of March, Palestine Solidarity Central Coast (PSCC)—along with the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCSC, Jews Against White Supremacy (UCSC), Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ, Santa Cruz chapter), and Democratic Socialists for America (DSA), Santa Cruz chapter—will hold a virtual teach-in called, “How We Struggle: BDS in Liberation Struggles from South Africa to Palestine.” The teach-in will explore how BDS has been and can be used in liberation struggles across time and place, and it will ask how—in this current moment of intensifying U.S.-backed Israeli genocide against Palestinians—we can effectively use BDS today to move urgently towards equality, justice, and freedom for Palestinians.
Speakers will include:
Professor Xavier Livermon. Xavier Livermon is an Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the California, Santa Cruz. Livermon’s writing and research is interested in how music relates to the social and how minoritized communities imagine freedom. His first book “Kwaito Bodies: Remastering Space & Subjectivity in Post-apartheid South Africa” was published in 2020 with Duke University Press.
Professor Stephen Zunes. Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he served as founding director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program. He is currently serving as the Torgny Segerstedt Visiting Research Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was a prominent student activist in the BDS movement targeting apartheid South Africa.
Catherine Elias. Catherine Elias is a graduate student organizer specializing in Palestine studies while organizing as Co-Chair of the national Palestine Solidarity Working Group, Co-President of the Palestine Working Group at Columbia, and as an organizer with the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition. Previously, Catherine worked as the International Coordinator for Israeli Apartheid Week for the BDS Movement, as a Program Coordinator for the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, and as the Deputy Director of a Palestinian mutual aid organization in the West Bank.
Professor Christine Hong. Dr. Christine Hong is Associate Professor of Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her political commentary has appeared in The Nation and on Democracy Now! and Al Jazeera. She specializes in transnational Asian American, Korean diaspora, U.S. war and empire, and comparative ethnic studies.
Samir Eskanda. Samir Eskanda is a Palestinian artist, organizer, and human rights activist based in the UK. As a musician he has released a number of records on independent labels. His views on the intersection of culture and activism and why art should not be used to whitewash apartheid or other grave human rights violations have appeared in the Hollywood Reporter, Sky News, and others. He has played a key role in many campaigns, covered by the New York Times, CNN, BBC, Rolling Stone, among others, appealing to celebrities like Shakira and Lana del Rey to cancel performances in Tel Aviv. He has also helped organize high profile petitions defending the freedom of expression of artists speaking out for Palestinian rights, including Sally Rooney, Lorde, and Emma Watson, against repressive attacks aimed at intimidating or silencing them.
Isabel Kain. Isabel Kain is a graduate worker and astrophysicist at UCSC, and is organizing with fellow graduate workers at campuses across the country to withhold their labor from military research and excise militarism and imperialism from science.
Dov Baum. Dov (Dalit) Baum, Ph.D., is the Director of Corporate Accountability and Research in AFSC, leading the Action Center for Corporate Accountability. She was the cofounder of the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel, of the Who Profits research institute, and of Black Laundry direct action group. Dov holds a Ph.D. in Math from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Moderated by Yulia Gilich. Yulia Gilich is a media artist, theorist, community organizer, and member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) at UC Santa Cruz. They received their PhD in Film & Digital Media from UCSC. Their work is interdisciplinary and sits at the nexus of media studies, cultural geography, and critical race theory.