QAIA flyering for Park Slope Food Co-op vote on BDS

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In case you have not yet heard, there is an important effort to have the Park Slope Food Coop join the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Even if you are not a member of the Food Coop you can help!

Below is some background on what's happening. Here are two things you can do:

1) Queers Against Israeli Apartheid has signed up for one slot of leafletting at the Food Coop, as have many other groups around the city. If you can join us for an hour or two this coming Sunday, March 18th at 4 pm that would be terrific. If you can come, please send an email to Leslie Cagan (leslieca...@igc.org) so we know how many people to expect. The Coop is located at 782 Union Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues, in Park Slope.

2) If you are a member of the Park Slope Food Coop please be sure to attend the general membership meeting on Tuesday, March 27th and vote YES for a referendum that would allow all 16,000+ coop members to vote on join the BDS movement.

Please pass along this information to others as well. Thanks so much!!
Leslie Cagan on behalf of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA-NY)

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Background

On Tuesday, March 27th, the Park Slope Food Coop General Meeting will discuss and vote on whether to hold a coop referendum. The referendum would allow the entire 16,000 + membership to vote about whether the Coop should join the international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement movement against the Israeli government's occupation of Palestine and its persecution of the Palestinian people. They need as many coop members as possible to attend as the vote in the March 27th General Meeting (GM) could be very close. This monthly meeting is where most important decisions are made for the coop. There are rarely more than 300 who attend, a small percentage of the membership. That's why they want to hold a coop-wide referendum.

Some of the ways BDS might be implemented at the coop (if the referendum passes) would be to stop selling Israeli products and perhaps to divest coop funds from corporations that support the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. For example, the Food Coop could stop selling the SodaStream seltzer makers and they could refuse to invest in the Motorola Corporation whose products are used to control movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

If you are a member of the Food Coop, you are urged to come to the March 27th meeting. If you sign up ahead of time you can also get workslot credit for attending. Please ask any coop member you know who would support the vote for a referendum to also attend.

Meeting Details: Tuesday, March 27th - at 7 pm
 Brooklyn Tech High School
 29 Fort Greene Place (across from Fort Greene Park)
 Nearest subway stops: R, Q, B to DeKalb Ave; G to Fulton Street; 2, 3,4,5 to Nevins Street
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"Equality Forum" pinkwashing defended in seriously racist gay article

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Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren
Equality Forum's keynote speaker

Drape this guy in rainbows, and he's
still a straight, war-mongering, racist
politician telling queers what to think.
The Equality Forum, an annual symposium (organized by a Log Cabin Republican and sporting a website with pictures only of white people), is making Israel its featured nation this year. In addition to being an pretty foul, deliberately-timed act of pinkwashing, the whole thing is creepily fetishy about Israelis. The keynote speaker is the Israeli Ambassador, who isn't gay -- but at least he's Israeli! At least three panels are described only as "Israeli speaker" or "Israeli moderator and Israeli panelists." (Update - no names even now that the forum is over. Their Israeliness is apparently all the information you need.) The Equality Forum website excitedly annouces that Tel Aviv was named "best gay city of 2011!" by some other random website. As with all things pinkwashing, information is replaced by empty slogans.

Accordingly, the Equality Forum is defended in a stunningly racist op-ed by the publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, Mark Segal. Here's a sample:
"The [Palestinian] culture is so hateful to LGBT people that any LGBT activism is limited due to the very possible chance of violence... By supporting the Palestinians, one is supporting an anti-equality cause, if not supporting hate crimes themselves."
As any fan of racist, jingoistic writing knows, it's important to lump all members of a group together and then speak for them, just as Segal does. Especially when they've been speaking for themselves, but not saying what you wish they'd say. A blob called "The Palestinians" is much easier to dismiss as evil homophobic demons than actual Palestinians, especially queer ones, and especially queer activists.

It's also important to credential oneself as a gay liberal ("I have been a member of Peace Now"!) before deciding that Palestinian queers' analysis of their own culture and means for change is not worth mentioning, and endorsing Israeli Apartheid as the solution.

Palestinian Queers for BDS has written another relatively patient correction...

Update 5/14/12: Columbia profs Katherine Franke and Kendall Thomas, as well as "Rabbi Rebecca Alpert who was scheduled to speak on a panel about religion, and Pauline Park, who was also a member of the January delegation and was slated to speak on transgender rights, have also decided to boycott the Equality Forum’s global summit this year due to its selection of Israel as its 'featured nation.'"
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Hanging out the pinkwashing: word is on the street.

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It took a while, but after 5 years of Israeli PR targeted at LGBT tourists, queers are finally succeeding in blowing the lid off the Israeli government's pinkwashing campaign. Just as pro-Israel/pro-Apartheid newspapers are full of claims (like this one) that queers should adore Israel and despise Palestinians, LGBT newspapers are increasingly full of calls to refuse the hate bait. Here are this week's bits:
...And a must-read from Israel's Alternative Information Center (plus credit for photo above):
Israel seeks minorities, gays for propaganda efforts
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Heidi Boghosian (National Lawyers Guild) speaks @ "Occupy the Center!"

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Remarks by Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild
LGBT Center Protest, March 3, 2012

I’m not supposed to be here today!

The National Lawyers Guild Legal Observers are not supposed to be here today!

We usually fight the oppressors who squelch free speech.

This is the first Occupy event that I’ve addressed, and I had to come today because I am a part of this community.

As the legal arm to many social movements for 75 years, the National Lawyers Guild watched the growth of the LGBT Center with great pride. Our missions align in many ways—to ensure that all members of society are treated with dignity. The Guild publishes a legal treatise called “Sexual Orientation and the Law.” We also published the legal treatise “AIDS and the Law”—both working to challenge ill-informed hatred impacting this community.

We urge the Center to keep site of the roots of oppression—an economic and political system that enriches a few at the expense of so many. To the extent that the Center does not support others who are oppresses, its own struggle is diminished and its own liberation is incomplete.

As a community, we must join hands to defeat this economic and political system that create these problems rather than becoming a part of it. Our shared mission is to advance human rights. Let us not permit insular interests to split our solidarity with other community’s unjustly oppressed.
By failing to support victims of international law violations and human rights standards, and by succumbing to the outspoken in power, this Center betrays its historic mission.
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QAIA intro to "Occupy the LGBT Center!"

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Mic check!! Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is here to Occupy the LGBT Center, to protest the Center's exclusion of queers from our own community space.

We see the barricades outside, we see the cops! They are shamefully policing queers who are challenging the Center's racist exclusion. They are shamefully policing queers who challenge pinkwashing of Israeli apartheid. Shamefully policing queers who challenge anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigots.

For the last year, the Center's director and board have shut out queers:
 Queers whose political organizing for human rights makes the Center nervous.
 Queers whose Arab ethnicity or Muslim religion makes the Center nervous.
 Queers whose challenging of Israel's racist apartheid laws makes the Center nervous.

How did this happen?!

Last year, the Center tossed out Siegebusters, and Palestine solidarity group of queers and non-queers, just days before its biggest awareness and fundraising event. Our communities were outraged! The Center heard from...
 Palestinian queers who were outraged...
 Immigrant queers who were outraged...
 Queers of color who were outraged...
 Trans queers who were outraged...
 Activist queers who were outraged...
... all of whose work got queers the rights we "enjoy" today.


The Center also heard from a few powerful gay and straight bigots. They said anyone who stands with Palestinian queers is providing "a fig leaf for Arab homophobes." They wanted to pit queers against Arabs and Muslims -- as if no Arabs or Muslims are queers. As if queers must go along with racism out of some twisted kind of self-interest.

The Center sided with the bigots. In a community meeting, they promised to "deal with the issue." One year later, they're still excluding us. From the Center, we've heard only silence.

But we will not be silent! Here's who's in the room today!
 Queers for an Open LGBT Center (QFOLC)
 alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society
 Adalah-NY: the New York Campaign for Boycott of Israel
 Brooklyn for Peace
 FIERCE!
 Jewish Voice for Peace-NY
 Jews Say No!
 International Action Center
 International Socialist Organization
 Lesbian & Gay Solidarity, Melbourne, Australia
 Metropolitan Community Church of New York
 New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
 Palestinian Queers for BDS
 Siegebusters
 South Asian Lesbian & Gay Association (SALGA)
 Sylvia Rivera Law Project
 Workers World Party
 Young, Jewish and Proud
 and... Queers Against Israeli Apartheid!

All of us together stand up against pinkwashing! Pinkwashing tries to use queer rights as cover to deny Palestinian rights, and to cover up apartheid. Queers reject pinkwashing in Israel!
And we won't let our community center be a tool for racism -- for excluding.

We're here to Occupy the Center, until the Center
- Ends the ban on Palestine solidarity organizing here.
- opens the Center for all.
- brings its board meetings and decision-making out of the corporate boardroom and back into our community!

Whose Center? Our Center!!
Anti-Arab hate? NO! Queers won't take the bait!

(Emmaia Gelman for Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.)
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Pix from Occupy the LGBT Center!

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Video, articles & speak-outs from "Occupy the Center!"

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Video

Articles

Speak-outs (in chronological order)

These lists will be updated as coverage is posted online. Thanks to everyone who helped document this event!
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Darnell Moore @ Occupy the Center!

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Photo: Bud Korotzer
Comments from Darnell L. Moore, March 3 @ Occupy the Center!
Darnell Moore (Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality at NYU) just returned from the US LGBT delegation to Palestine.

During our delegation's visit to Hebron, we stood on a street separated by a 3-4 ft. partition. This barrier was seemingly designed to ensure safety...to somehow keep the peace by forcing a form of disconnection between the Israeli settlers and Palestinian people living there. We stood on the Palestinian side of the barrier and observed in horror as this guarded wall (this military apparatus of division, of mobility control, of segregation) forced many Palestinians to walk on one side as a means to allow the safety of the few settlers we observed walking on the other side. I was deeply saddened and angered by— what another delegate named—a mechanism of “apartheid”, this mini separation wall. I also felt a deep sense of shame when I was allowed access to the Israeli side of the barrier knowing that the Palestinians who live or daily travel in Hebron, could not.

This account, my standing at that wall...looking in the direction of the armed officers guarding it...feeling the force of segregation....is a troubling and perfect way to think about the question of what's queer about the anti-occupation of Palestinian land and bodies and the Palestinian struggle for self-determination?

If we understand queerness to be a political framework—one that seeks the destabilization of state sanctioned regimes of control (of our bodies, our identities, our expressions whether sexual or otherwise), the refusal of labels that delimit and limit us, the undoing of accepted and mundane practices, laws, and ideas that diminish our humanity, the dismantling of literal and metaphorical barriers, of that 3-5 ft. wall in Hebron that actually harms both Israeli and Palestinians because it disallows the possibility of community—than the answer to the question of what's queer about anti-occupation is: every damn thing!

We aren't queer merely because of our varied sexualities. We are queer because we know how dehumanizing and oppressing it is to try to exist in our fullest human potential within the limited space of somebody's, some state's boxes, behind labels and, therefore, behind “walls”.

We are assembled here today because of, yet, another "wall" that is both ideological and material in the form of a moratorium. We stand here in the NYC LGBT Community Center in protest because The Center thinks that it is okay to build a barrier that prevents some peoples and ideas from being embraced within the community. We stand here because we know that tools of division used to somehow secure peace will only result in its absence.

What's queer about anti-occupation? Every damn thing! What's queer about walls, barriers, separations, division, disharmony, communal dissolution, the impossibility of solidarities, moratorium? Nothing!
---
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ROCKED IT: reportback from "Occupy the LGBT Center!"

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Yesterday, 150 people occupied the LGBT Center!! Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and 15 other groups* packed the lobby with chants, signs, speak-outs and a banner drop. Check out photos, video and press coverage.

We protested the Center's horrifying indifference to the queers of color, Arab and Muslim queers, and activist queers whose work got us where we are today -- and who are marginalized by the ban on queer human rights organizing in solidarity with Palestinians.

We protested the Center's shameful policing (literally, with the NYPD on patrol) of queers meeting in our own community center.

We protested the Center's perversion of a major queer institution to support racist bigots who would deny not only human rights, but the humanity, of people based on their identity.

The Center's director, Glennda, was there -- but in keeping with the Center's total refusal to communicate with the outraged queer community, she didn't come out. Instead, the Center did its usual trick of "communicating" by press release. According to Gay City News, the press release claims that the Center's ban intends "to ensure that all LGBT people feel comfortable coming here." Dear Center: what?!

But queers communicated the heck out of the Center! The protest/teach-in occupied the Center's lobby and entrance for nearly three hours, to overwhelmingly supportive response from passers-by on their way to queer events. And in days before the protest, Glennda Testone and NY City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (who's queer, represents the Center's neighborhood, directs public funding to the Center, wants to be mayor, and has said nothing during the past year about the Center's marginalization of queers) received close to 500 emails from queers and Jewish activists demanding that the Center end the ban.**

The pressure on the Center has been slow to build, as information spreads about pinkwashing in Israel and the Center's NYC complicity, it's reaching a boiling point: queers are mad, and they're speaking out.


*Groups:
Queers for an Open LGBT Center (QFOLC)
alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society
Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel
Brooklyn for Peace
Jewish Voice for Peace-NY
Jews Say No!
International Action Center
International Socialist Organization
Metropolitan Community Church of New York
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
Palestinian Queers for BDS
SALGA
Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Workers World Party
Young, Jewish and Proud

**Thanks, Jewish Voice for Peace!
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