Read up on USPCN’s work in 2019!

December 30th, 2019

Dear Supporters of Palestine, Supporters of Liberation & Return,

On behalf of USPCN’s National Coordinating Committee, I want to wish you all a safe and enjoyable New Year’s celebration, and a healthy and happy 2020!

One of USPCN’s most consistent supporters is pledging to MATCH all donations between now and the official end of 2019, so please make your tax-deductible donation now.

It’s been another year of great struggle in Palestine and across the world, with the incredible #GreatReturnMarch entering its 22nd month in Gaza. Over 200 unarmed protesters have been killed by the Israeli military since it began in March of 2018, with close to 20,000 injured. But our people continue to demand their Right to Return!

Vicious attacks against the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (#BDS) movement continue on a daily basis, but they are not unopposed. We publicly supported Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib for their strength in combating racist attacks against them, and also fight for everyone’s #RightToBoycott!

In addition, Trump and his racist and white supremacist merry men, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, have gone absolutely nowhere with their Deal of the Century, another example of the Palestinian and Arab masses rejecting not only Trump, but also any attempts at normalization with Israel’s apartheid and colonialist regime.

USPCN is also proud to have helped bring our best and brightest directly from Occupied Palestine to the U.S in 2019. We toured in April with Ramallah’s Wishah Popular Dance Troupe to Toledo, Dearborn, Cleveland, and Chicago, where this brilliant debka troupe performed in front of over 2,000 people. Watch this beautiful video from the Chicago show, produced by Sensitive Visuals.

In August, we then hosted the inimitable teenaged Palestinian journalist, Janna Jihad (left), in Detroit and Chicago, two legs of her U.S. tour. Read more about it here.
Lana Ramadan, a representative of the most important Palestinian political prisoners’ rights organization in the world, Addameer, visited the U.S. from Ramallah and made a stop in Chicago in October, where USPCN hosted her presentation to over 100 Palestine support activists and organizers. That very same weekend, USPCN-Milwaukee co-sponsored a number of events for Yousef Aljamal (right), a Palestinian writer and human rights activist from Gaza.
USPCN also played a leading role in the largest gathering of Black, Latinx, and other police accountability organizers in the country – the refounding conference of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. This picture below is of Arabs from USPCN, Students for Justice in Palestine, and other organizations who attended the conference. Read more here.

And we closed out the year by supporting the Scientists for Palestine call to free U.S. citizen Ubai Aboudi from Israeli prison. Aboudi (below left, in the picture kissing his wife Hind) is an education and human rights organizer in Palestine who was abducted by the Israeli military and is currently in administrative detention – a policy Israel utilizes to imprison activists and organizers without charge for as long as 90 days at a time, and sometimes renews indefinitely. #Freedom4Ubai #Science4Palestine #AdministrativeDetentionIsAWarCrime

(Correction: USPCN is not a member of Scientists for Palestine. That may have been assumed from a previous version of this letter.)

USPCN accomplishes a lot with very little. We have no paid staff, only volunteers, but we dedicate endless hours to the liberation of Palestine and freedom for all oppressed people in the U.S. and beyond. Support our work and have your donation MATCHED today!

Until Liberation & Return,

George Khoury, USPCN National Coordinating Committee, Detroit Chapter