Tonight at 19:00 at Blågårds Plads. We'll gather and then walk up Nørrebrogade to Nørrebro Station. There will be live Arabic music and hopefully plenty of people and enthusiasm. Facebook event for Blågårds Plads tonight.
ALSO- a larger demonstration is planned for 17:00 at Christiansborg this Thursday. Facebook event for Thursday
And here's a link for the facebook page for the International Solidarity Movement.
I feel very lucky to know the person who is organizing this demonstration - it will be good to show solidarity and meet with others here who are also disturbed by the senseless violence now taking place. I'm excited to be involved with this movement / show of support in Copenhagen.
Over the past days I have thought a LOT about the messages and assumptions surrounding Palestine and Israel that I grew up with in the US. Bottom line is that for most of my life I spent a lot of time around Jewish friends and an extremely pro-Israel society and media... and I knew no Muslim or Arabic people. That has changed (thankfully) since I went to college. To be clear, many of my Jewish friends have an extremely nuanced and compassionate perspective on the conflict. The problem was that Jewishness was so normal to me while Muslimness which was foreign, exotic, 'other' and I had no idea that this was the case.
I am not interested in arguing about one state, two state or a red state, blue state solution. (That's supposed to be a Dr. Seuss reference... not US politics...) In other words... while it's ideologically important to discuss the origins and history of Israel and Palestine as states, that discussion often supersedes addressing the human rights situation facing people living in Palestine and Israel right now. The way Palestinian lives are treated as expendable and the discriminatory policies enshrined in Israeli law cannot be tolerated.
Words like 'occupation' or 'apartheid' or 'illegal settlement' once sounded extreme to my ear. And I can understand why - so much of what I grew up hearing was a not so subtle account of how violent and scary the Arab world is. On the one hand Europe generally and Denmark more specifically has it's problems with racism towards Muslims. Yet I still feel that the conversation - both in the media but even more so among people - is much more balanced and based in the reality facing people who live in the region.
Looking forward to the demonstration. Hope to see you there if you're in Copenhagen :)
ALSO- a larger demonstration is planned for 17:00 at Christiansborg this Thursday. Facebook event for Thursday
And here's a link for the facebook page for the International Solidarity Movement.
I feel very lucky to know the person who is organizing this demonstration - it will be good to show solidarity and meet with others here who are also disturbed by the senseless violence now taking place. I'm excited to be involved with this movement / show of support in Copenhagen.
Over the past days I have thought a LOT about the messages and assumptions surrounding Palestine and Israel that I grew up with in the US. Bottom line is that for most of my life I spent a lot of time around Jewish friends and an extremely pro-Israel society and media... and I knew no Muslim or Arabic people. That has changed (thankfully) since I went to college. To be clear, many of my Jewish friends have an extremely nuanced and compassionate perspective on the conflict. The problem was that Jewishness was so normal to me while Muslimness which was foreign, exotic, 'other' and I had no idea that this was the case.
I am not interested in arguing about one state, two state or a red state, blue state solution. (That's supposed to be a Dr. Seuss reference... not US politics...) In other words... while it's ideologically important to discuss the origins and history of Israel and Palestine as states, that discussion often supersedes addressing the human rights situation facing people living in Palestine and Israel right now. The way Palestinian lives are treated as expendable and the discriminatory policies enshrined in Israeli law cannot be tolerated.
Words like 'occupation' or 'apartheid' or 'illegal settlement' once sounded extreme to my ear. And I can understand why - so much of what I grew up hearing was a not so subtle account of how violent and scary the Arab world is. On the one hand Europe generally and Denmark more specifically has it's problems with racism towards Muslims. Yet I still feel that the conversation - both in the media but even more so among people - is much more balanced and based in the reality facing people who live in the region.
Looking forward to the demonstration. Hope to see you there if you're in Copenhagen :)
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