Solidarity in Action: Witnessing Apartheid, Supporting the BDS Call

Premilla Nadasen, Women and Gender in Palestine: Reflections from an Anti-Apartheid Activist

Jasbir Puar, Queer BDS: Homonationalism and the Occupation

Moderated by Riham Barghouti

This event is part of Israeli Apartheid Week. See the full NYC calendar HERE.

In June 2011, eleven indigenous and women of color scholars, activists, and artists visited occupied Palestine. In January 2012, a diverse group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and trans activists, academics, artists, and cultural workers from the US participated in a solidarity tour in Palestine. Both groups returned to publish statements about what they saw and learned, the connections they made between and among struggles, and their unequivocal support for the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it guarantees rights for Palestinian people. Members of these delegations will share their reflections on solidarity in the context of their recent trips, and offer suggestions for moving forward.

Premilla Nadasen, associate professor of history at Queens College (City University of New York), was born in South Africa and moved to the United States at a young age. She has been involved in anti-racist, feminist, welfare rights, and anti-apartheid organizing for many years. She is currently researching the history of domestic worker organizing in the US, with plans to release a book on the subject. Professor Nadasen has received many awards and commendations for her academic work, including a nomination for the Bancroft Award for her dissertation on the welfare rights movement, the 2002 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Article Prize for her article “Expanding the Boundaries of the Women’s Movement: Black Feminism and the Struggle for Welfare Rights,” and the 2005 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize awarded by the American Studies Association for best book in American studies for Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States. She has had the distinction of being the first Visiting Endowed Chair of Women’s Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and was named one of America's “Top Young Historians” by History Musings. Nadasen has also contributed her writings to a large and varied assortment of publications including as a regular contributor for Progressive Media Project and as a blogger for Ms. Magazine.

Jasbir Puar, professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, is the author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Duke University Press, 2007), which won the 2007 Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Professor Puar has also authored numerous articles that appear in Gender, Place, and Culture; Social Text; Radical History Review; Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography; and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her edited volumes include a special issue of GLQ entitled "Queer Tourism: Geographies of Globalization," and she co-edited a volume of Society and Space entitled "Sexuality and Space." She is currently working on a book project focused on queer disability studies and theories of affect and assemblage. Professor Puar is also a contributor to The Guardian, Art India, Bully Bloggers and Oh! Industry. After returning from the LGBTQ delegation to Palestine, she published an article on The Feminist Wire called “The Golden Handcuffs of Gay Rights: How Pinkwashing Distorts Both LGBTIQ and Anti-Occupation Activism."

Riham Barghouti is a Palestinian American activist who lived in the Occupied Palestinian Territory for 10 years. She currently resides in New York City where she works as a teacher. Ms. Barghouti is a founding member of Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel and PACBI, The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

This event is part of the eighth annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), a series of events held concurrently in cities around the world to raise awareness of Israel as an apartheid state and to bolster support for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns. For a full listing of IAW events in New York City and globally, please visit apartheidweek.org.

Co-sponsored by the Audre Lorde Project and Siegebusters

Facebook event page: www.facebook.com/events/268050113265050