FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 27 November 2024
SIGN THE PETITION IN #SolidarityWithAisha ABDEL GAWAD
As culture and media workers who organize with Uptown for Palestine, we stand against the sustained and targeted harassment of Aisha Abdel Gawad in response to her deeply moral stance against the genocidal decimation of human life in Palestine.
It is every individual’s right and responsibility to stand against apartheid and genocide. As culture workers, we particularly assert our right to express our values in our cultural output and presence in public life as whole human beings and to withdraw our labor from institutions and programming that do not uphold them. Further, we stand in support of the Palestinian people and their right to self-defense and self-determination. And we pledge, alongside thousands of other culture and media workers, not to work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit with the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.
As a multiracial coalition based out of uptown Manhattan, rooted in communities that are indelibly rooted in colonialism and imperialism, the resonance between the deeply imperial genocide unfolding in Gaza and that of our own communities is clear and obvious. And as a multiracial coalition, we deeply reject the conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, a conflation that is in itself deeply anti-Semitic.
In Abdel’s words, “You cannot feel any sense of certainty when you exist in a constant state of gaslighting, of wondering and doubting whether you are considered an enemy by your own country, by your own college, or employer.” We refuse these conditions and demand space for all culture workers to stand against genocide free of reprisal and harassment.
Please sign this petition in #SolidarityWithAisha Abdel Gawad as she faces a brutal, baseless smearing campaign of harassment from not only her local community but also nationally.
