March 10, 2020

As institutions of higher learning shut down amidst the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), National SJP wants to offer some thoughts on how this moment affects our movement on campuses across North America. National SJP wants to encourage student organizers to remain steadfast as we maneuver the multitude of changes to our campus context. Israeli Apartheid Week - one of the largest coordinated political education campaigns on Palestinian liberation - was set to begin this coming week. Under guidance from health officials, most of the planned in person events will need to be cancelled or rescheduled. All of next week National SJP will be hosting a “virtual IAW,” and we encourage chapters to engage in virtual political education events and online organizing.

Despite the unprecedented setbacks to our work, we understand that agility and adaptability is vital in building our movement and uplifting calls for freedom, justice, and equality through BDS. As a dedicated group of student activists committed to the the self-determination and liberation of the Palestinian people - as well as all marginalized peoples - it is imperative that we, like the organizers before us, rise to the challenge of the moment and demand what we have spent semesters fighting for. We have to transform physical barriers to organizing into creative and accommodating methods of engaging students and community members.

While many of our organizing tactics will need to shift, our movement must not come to a halt. We take guidance from organizers in Palestine who continue to build together in spite of near impossible conditions of movement and communication. We learn from the disability justice movement that has for years organized virtually due to the challenges of in-person organizing for many in our communities. In this crisis we know that we must rise to the challenge of the moment and demand what our communities have always called for: work with dignity, justice for young people and families, right to our homes, sanctuary, safety, and dignity, community control, and other public health as a partial list.

In Palestine, we know that the people most impacted by this pandemic will be the Palestinians living under brutal military blockade in Gaza, elders, people who have chronic illnesses that have been deprived of proper healthcare by brutal Israeli policies, and Palestinian prisoners forced into the occupation's overcrowded prison cells which lack basic hygiene and resources. As always, we must center the most impacted people in our organizing and community health responses, increasing mutual aid, supporting our friends and loved ones, and holding elected officials accountable to the people.

Below, we've included resources for virtual organizing, mutual aid resources, and community care:

Do you have a question about COVID-19? Send them on Instagram to @superbug.hunter, a former member of National SJP's Steering Committee who specializes in infectious diseases.

Bay Rising Statement on COVID-19 and Community Demands

Bay Rising Organizing Resources for COVID-19 Conditions

Coronavirus Resource Kit

JVP Havurah Network How We Gather + Love in the time of COVID-19