Note: Please see the follow up statement issued by the Steering Committee on 10/12/23
We, the Twin Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are heartbroken after watching 2 million Gazans live in the world’s largest open-air prison, where access to basic necessities like medical care and electricity are frequently denied to them by Israel. After seeing our Palestinian siblings be denied movement outside of the prison walls that encircle Gaza. After all the settler-colonial violence and dispossession. After having to repeat that Muslim worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Masjid in Jerusalem have the right to pray and practice their religion without fear of Israeli police and settler violence, harassment, and intimidation. After watching US politicians on all sides of the political spectrum speak cautiously, or not at all, when Israeli settlers use colonial and apartheid laws of the Israeli state to force Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands but speak with immense force and certainty about the Israeli state’s right to defend itself against Palestinians. After attempts at false equivalencies — when, since 1917, colonial and zionist settler states, and the world’s largest imperial powers, have used Palestine as a site of experimentation in war crimes and atrocities against Palestians simply seeking to live their lives. After seeing article after article about another Palestinian child being murdered by the IDF for simply existing in public. We are heartbroken.
We, the Twin Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are also resolved. We are resolved in our fight to support the efforts of Palestinians, in Palestine and in the diaspora, in their efforts to free their people. Just as Palestinians took to the streets after George Floyd was murdered, we are resolved to show the same solidarity in defense of Palestinian liberation. We are resolved to build our capacity as a chapter to take our fight to city halls, to the state capitol, and to the halls of national power in the USA — to end all US financial support for the Israeli settler apartheid regime. We are resolved to strengthen ties between Indigenous movements, locally and across Turtle Island, and the anti-racist and anti-colonial international movement for Palestinian liberation. We are resolved to work toward rematriation of land in good relationship in the movements against the violent state and state-sponsored settler dispossession and mass killing of the Santee Dakhóta, the Anishinaabe, and other Native communities of present-day Minnesota. Justice for our Palestinian relatives can also unequivocally be named “Land Back”. We are resolved to enshrine the right to freedom of movement in Palestine, in the USA, and around the globe, and to fight border fascism wherever it rears its hideous head. We are resolved to work to ensure that our own DSA chapter and nationally endorsed elected officials not only vote against military funding for Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid, but also work towards the ending of US-sponsorship of Israeli occupation of Palestine. We are resolved in our commitment to not fear the backlash that comes from being vocally, and boldly, in favor of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Palestinian freedom, for as socialists and internationalists, we are often the only ones willing to take a stand for justice, even when it is unpopular, or even dangerous. We are resolved to proclaim “From the River, to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” today and until liberation.
-Twin Cities DSA Steering Committee