Black Liberation and Palestinian Liberation Are Interconnected

From Detroit to Cleveland to Gaza, and everywhere in between, we must fight for a world built on equal rights, freedom from oppression, and human dignity for all people. In the words of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” The collective liberation of oppressed people everywhere is intertwined, and we must come together to fight for justice at home and around the world.

In this spirit, it has been deeply inspiring to see organizations focused on Black liberation, from the NAACP to the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to The King Center, embrace the cause of Palestinian human rights. All of these groups have called for a cease-fire in Gaza—and recently, the NAACP, the nation’s leading civil rights organization, went a step further, urging the Biden administration to stop weapons shipments to Israel. This courageous declaration by the NAACP is the latest example of the shared struggle for Black and Palestinian liberation.

When we come together in solidarity to build a multi-racial, cross-faith, multi-generational movement, we realize our power to bend the arc of the moral universe. Just as our civil rights leaders who came before us did, we all have a moral responsibility to speak out against injustice everywhere and dismantle systemic racism, white supremacy, and all systems of oppression.

We also have to unite because our struggles are so interconnected; for instance, according to US Census Bureau estimates, the poverty rate is 33.8 percent in Detroit and 31.8 percent in Cleveland—two of the highest rates among America’s largest cities. In a country that wastes trillions of dollars on war while continuing to defund our social safety net, we know that poverty is a policy choice. Our communities often wonder why elected officials are not addressing this crisis with the urgency it deserves. When we look at our politicians’ indifference to the suffering here in America, we can understand their indifference to the atrocities we are witnessing unfold every day in Gaza.

If our elected leaders can see what is happening in the communities they claim to represent, where people sleep on the streets and children drink contaminated water; if they can see babies in America going to bed hungry, and not act, it’s no surprise that they can also ignore the starving babies in Gaza. If our elected leaders will stand by and allow American police to brutalize Black and brown people in our communities, it makes sense that they also excuse the Israeli forces that train many of them.

So how can we change this?

Despite being built to uphold white supremacy and maintain the status quo, our government has always been an institution that responds to external pressure. During the height of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, there was clarity among activists about the need to realize Black liberation and force public policy to protect Black lives. The powerful in Washington didn’t just wake up one day and decide to end Jim Crow. The people forced the passage of civil rights legislation by marching, boycotting, and leading civil disobedience, relentlessly fighting for clear policy demands until they were passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.

We must have the courage to raise our collective voice again on the frontlines of justice. Just as we march in defense of Black lives and against police brutality in our own country, we now march for Palestinian lives, demanding that our own government stop funding genocide.

Unfortunately, the three major evils the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned of—racism, poverty, and war—are still raging and are all linked. Since October, Israeli forces have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 15,000 children, and more than 85,000 people have been injured. They have killed at least 548 Palestinians, including more than 135 children, in the West Bank. The consensus of the international community is clear: The Israeli government is committing crimes against humanity that not only constitute the crime of apartheid, or racist oppression and segregation, but also violate the Genocide Convention and international law. South Africa, after defeating US-backed apartheid, has now become a voice for Palestinians at the International Court of Justice to stop this genocide, highlighting the need for communities seeking justice to come together in solidarity.