This coming weekend, thousands of pro-Palestine activists are set to gather for the second annual “People’s Conference for Palestine” in Detroit, Michigan. From August 29 to August 31, conference attendees will hear from a variety of leaders from around the world and from different sectors of the movement for Palestine.

The conference is being organized by a coalition of 12 groups – the Palestinian Youth Movement, the US Palestinian Community Network, The People’s Forum, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, the ANSWER Coalition, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the People’s Center for Palestine, National Students for Justice in Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza, and the Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC).

“The Zionists have done everything in their power to rewrite history,” Roua Daas, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, told Peoples Dispatch, speaking about the significance of the conference. “But the Zionists ultimately have failed. The grassroots movement has been able to expose the truth about Israel to the world, and we must continue to do so.”

Palestinian journalists confront repression

Palestinian journalists, who have faced state repression in the form of outright slaughter by the Israeli government, will be speaking at the upcoming conferences.  This includes Abubaker Abed, a Palestinian journalist from the Deir al-Balah Refugee Camp in Gaza. Abed began his journalistic career covering football, but after Israel began its war on Gaza, he found himself becoming an “accidental war correspondent.” Other journalists speaking at the conference include Raja Abdulhaq, co-founder of Quds News Network, Mariam Barghouti, based in Ramallah, who has covered the region for over ten years, and Lama Ghosheh, a journalist placed under Israeli administrative detention for her social media posts.

Highlighting the Palestinian struggle behind bars

At the first annual People’s Conference for Palestine last year, the movement for Palestinian political prisoners received a major spotlight, with prominent guests including Sana’ Daqqah, activist, journalist, and the wife of the martyred Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqah. This year, that sector of the Palestinian movement will once again be highlighted, including through a plenary on “the Palestinian struggle behind bars”. Notable speakers involved in the movement for political prisoners include Omar Assaf, a former political prisoner himself.

Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was for months held by Trump’s immigration authorities as part of an effort to crackdown on Palestinian student activism in the US, is considered by many to have been a political prisoner within the United States. Khalil is also a featured speaker at the conference, alongside fellow Columbia University student activist and Gaza solidarity encampment leader Sueda Polat.

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