Thousands of pro-Palestine activists have gathered in Detroit, for the second annual “People’s Conference for Palestine: Gaza is the Compass”, running from August 29-31. The conference brings together activists and organizations across sectors from the movement for Palestine in the US and the world to discuss strategies going forward and assess the movement’s progress till now.

On the second day of the conference, Eugene Puryear, a journalist with BreakThrough News and a member of the ANSWER Coalition, spoke on the plenary “The Struggle Continues: The Fight for Palestine in North America” reflecting on the movement for Palestine in the United States and how to measure the progress of the mass movement.

Read his full speech below:

I’d like to open by saying that we need to continue to push to free all political prisoners, and I would like to dedicate my remarks here today, whatever they may be or whatever you may take them for, to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown, former chairman of SNCC. And I think it’s critically important to lift him up, hes in Florence Supermax prison, because he was one of the leaders of SNCC when SNCC took a bold position in 1967 to back the Palestinian people and to create an unbreakable solidarity between the Black liberation movement and the Palestinian liberation movement that has lasted from the southern fields, the people organizing from the right to vote, to the streets of Ferguson where the Palestinian people were doing everything they could to continue the fight against the racist machine here in the United States.

Eugene Puryear speaking at the People’s Conference for Palestine. Photo via People’s Conference for Palestine

When we reflect on the past two years and tactics, I feel we can only really reflect and measure our tactics against the objective reality of the imperial system that we are up against. We know that, and it’s been stated here, I think very well so far, that you know what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in Palestine, the settler colonial project of Israel, is not random. It’s not an aberration, but it’s really a key link in the broader imperial project of a handful of countries. And as Lamees has told us in the last session, a handful of people, to dominate the vast majority of the world.

When the Zionist forces went to the British imperialists and said, “support us”, they didn’t say do it because this is some great thing. They said, do it because it’s going to allow you to control this critical region of the world as you’re trying to do everything possible to control Africa, Asia and Latin America for your own self aggrandizement. And that continues till today.

And I think that’s why it’s no surprise that even at great risk to their own political careers, and certainly the moral stain that will be placed on them for perpetuity and generations, so many people have been willing to back this genocide wholeheartedly and openly, despite the huge amount of opposition that we’ve seen.

So I think we have to measure ourselves against that objective reality when we consider our tactics, which is why I think the range of tactics, because a lot of us here have worked together in many different ways, in many different contexts, we’ve done some of the same things, and we’ve also done a lot of different things.

But I think one of the main North Stars of where we’ve been going, is to create a mass movement for solidarity with Palestine. So, the tactics that have contributed to creating a mass movement in solidarity with Palestine are the most effective tactics, because imperialism is not moved by willpower, but by social power.

“Imperialism is not moved by willpower, but by social power.”

We know that this is a system that is built on the exploitation of the working classes against the oppression and exploitation of the oppressed nations, and the ideological and narrative apparatuses that emanate in many different ways to control, confuse, and to propagandize people.

So unless we’re able to build a mass movement that has bases, in all of those particular areas, we will never be able to turn our potential power into a real power. So even though I think every single one of us wakes up every day thinking, we wish more was changing and the genocide was over, I also want us to consider the transformation we’ve gone through, from just having a Palestine solidarity movement to having a mass movement in solidarity with Palestine.

We’ve had the opportunity to reach into the labor movement. I mean, let’s not forget that the Painters, which is not really a union people think of as the most progressive union, had its president, Jimmy Williams, say that they’re going to divest their pension funds from Israel.

We had the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most venerable and longest running African-American denominations in this country, in their General Assembly vote for an arms embargo and an end to all US aid to Israel.

We had not just the wave of encampments, and the encampments were critically important, but let’s also not forget that on all of those campuses and many more, there were almost unanimous massive majority votes amongst the student body for those universities to divest from Israel.

In the context of where we’re trying to go, where we need to do, and measuring ourselves against the objective power of the imperial machine we are up against, we have created a mass movement that is reaching into all of the key areas of social power that we would need to move to be able to not just change that apparatus, but in fact to transform it and overthrow it.

So, what’s the corollary here? I think the corollary is that the least effective tactics are the ones that denigrate mass movements, that gives short shrift to the need to move consciousness. But the reality is this mass consciousness is critically important to victory.

You think about the struggle against slavery in this country, that was a long, protracted struggle, it was hundreds of years. And it’s not because people weren’t fighting hard. People were fighting incredibly hard in many different ways in extraordinary circumstances. But it wasn’t really until mass consciousness shifted in the appropriate ways that they were able to take advantage of that to actually defeat slavery, overthrow slavery, and instituted a new system of human dignity and human freedom that many people thought could never exist in the history of the world.

What we do is critically important. In some ways it’s everything. Because if we don’t act, nothing is there. But there are also things that are outside of our control that will happen. And I believe they will happen. But they’re not things we can just conjure up through, through force of will, however much we might like.

And the question becomes, are we prepared to intervene when those shifts begin to happen in society, to move the levers we need to move, to make transformative change? And I think we have taken some of the first steps there in the tactics we’ve taken to build a mass movement in this country to reach into so many different sectors. I think there’s a lot more for us to build on to do, and I think we’ll talk about that as we move forward.

But I think that’s how I reflect on those tactics, is objectively against the imperial machine and moving into the areas we need to build a social power within.

The post Building a mass movement for Palestine is our “North Star”, says longtime activist Eugene Puryear appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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