UC Berkeley divestment vote

From: Sid Shniad
Subject: This morning's UC Berkeley divestment vote--it isn't over yet.

Jewish Voices For Peace
Friday, April 16, 2010 8:34 AM

Being a part of the tremendous coalition effort to pass a divestment bill at
Berkeley was quite simply an ecstatic experience.

As my colleague Sydney Levy said, "The movement grew by an enormous leap
today."

First, the vote itself: after the UC Berkeley Student Senate originally
voted on March 18, by a margin of 16-4, to divest from companies that profit
from the occupation, that vote was vetoed by the Senate president. The
Senate needed 14 votes to overturn his veto, but early this morning, after
an epic 10 plus hour meeting, senators found they had only 13 yes votes with
one abstention. So the students tabled a vote to overturn the veto. This
means the veto stands but can still be overturned later--there will be much
continued lobbying and activism in the coming weeks. (Meanwhile, some weeks
ago AIPAC openly threatened to take over the UC government to block the
bill.)

But in many ways, the vote itself was not the star of this story. For anyone
who was there last night and until 7:30 this morning when the forum ended,
it was clear what the future looks like.

For one, the smart money is on the members of UC Berkeley's Students for
Justice with Palestine (SJP), the group leading this effort. They are a
remarkable multi-ethnic group that seemingly includes every race, religion
and ethnicity including Muslims and Jews, and Israelis and Palestinians.
They are just brilliant thinkers and organizers and driven by a clear sense
of justice and empathy. They spent a year researching and writing the
divestment bill, and I can't express how much I love and respect them and
how much hope they make me feel. And there are students just like them on
every other campus in the world.

Second, the feeling on campus and in the room was electric. We filled an
enormous room that fits 900. Most stayed through the entire night. If you
can imagine, the evening started with remarkable statements by divestment
supporters Judith Butler, Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, Richard Falk,
Hatem Bazian and George Bisharat. And then the extraordinary parade of
students and community members who spoke on both sides of the issue until it
was past sunrise.

And though the final vote still hangs in the balance, the fact remains that
the vast majority of the Senate voted to divest. The bill garnered the
support of some of the most famous moral voices in the world, a good chunk
of the Israeli left (9 groups and counting), nearly 40 campus groups (almost
all student of color groups and one queer organization) plus another 40 US
off-campus groups.

In addition, the room was filled with Jewish divestment supporters of every
age including grandmothers and aunts and uncles and students. Our staff,
activist members, and Advisory Board members like Naomi Klein, Judith
Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and Noam Chomsky each played
critical roles in the effort. And of course, all of you who generated over
5,000 letters of support.
So much has changed since Gaza

Just 2 years ago we secured only 4 pages of Jewish endorsement letters for a
similar selective divestment effort. This time, we put together 29 pages of
major Jewish endorsement statements (which you can download here), and the
list continues to grow by the day. We also made 400 bright green stickers
that said "Another (fill in the blank) for human rights. Divest from the
Israeli occupation" and gave every single last one away.

As attorney Reem Salahi said to me, "When I was a student here in law school
2 years ago, no one spoke about divestment. Now everyone is talking about
it."

For those of us there, it was clear--the room was with divestment. The
senators were with divestment. And given the endorsements that kept pouring
in up to the last second, from Nobel prize winners, from Israeli peace
groups, from leading academics and activists--it seemed like the whole world
was with divestment.

There were a number of Jewish students who expressed seemingly real
discomfort if the divestment bill should pass. (As it turned out, they were
repeating these talking points almost verbatim, with histrionics
encouraged.) Many said they wouldn't feel safe on campus, others said they
would feel silenced, a few said young Jews would no longer want to come to
UC Berkeley.

While feeling for their discomfort, it was difficult to watch how speaker
after anti-divestment speaker seemed unable to distinguish between the
discomfort of infrequent dirty looks, and rare nasty or bigoted
name-calling, and the "discomfort" of having your home demolished or of
having only toxic water to give to your family or of being shot or stuck at
a checkpoint for hours in the sun.

They were unable to make the distinction between "feeling silenced" because
the bill might pass against their wishes, and being silenced because you are
jailed for your nonviolent activism or because you can't get a visa to
travel or because your story is virtually invisible in film, in history
books, in the mainstream media, everywhere.

I of course wasn't the only one who noticed this. Students of color, and one
student senator in particular, beautifully articulated what it meant to come
to campus "already marginalized." That is certainly a part of why so many
student of color campus groups support the divestment effort, and why the
links between being anti-racist in Israel/Palestine and anti-racist in the
U.S. (and elsewhere) are particularly strong, clear, and important -- and
these students know it.

Which makes the statements of the anti-divestment Jews all the more striking
in juxtaposition to the statements of the many Jewish students who supported
divestment, each of whom said, "I feel safe on this campus." And the
progressive Jewish UC-Berkeley senator who said, "this divest bill will
actually make me feel safe" and "this [bill] is creating space for Jews to
have a community here. I've never been prouder to be a Jew."

And that, if anything, suggests the most exciting part of what happened
here.

It's so clear to me how the organizing itself, and the ways it brought all
of us, but especially Jews and Muslims and Arabs of every age together, is
the solution. When peace happens, it will radiate outward from these
relationships, mirrored in the Israeli-Palestinian relationships in places
like Bil'in and Sheikh Jarrah. This was so apparent when I saw, on one side
of the room, Jewish and Palestinian and Muslim students literally leaning on
each other and holding hands for support--and on the other side of the room,
a relatively small (and by their own admonition, fearful) group of Jews that
seemed to mostly have each other. It was very jarring and poignant and
deeply sad.

The future is clear and it's already here. It is a multicultural (and
queer-integrated) universe bound together by a belief in full equality.
Period.

Silence and apathy are the friends of the status quo. Sunlight, debate,
facts, passion- these are what justice requires to grow. Open debates like
the one UC Berkeley held last night simply must happen at campuses
everywhere. The students of SJP have already won by making this debate
happen. The whole campus is talking about Israel and Palestine. Last night's
forum and vote will forever impact the lives of every person who was in that
room. And the new connections made have strengthened the movement in ways
none of us imagined.

No wonder Israeli Consulate General Akiva Tor stayed for the entire vote. If
I were he and it were my job to protect Israel's occupation, I'd be worried.
Very worried.

This morning, not hours after the meeting ended, I found an email in my
inbox from an SJP group at another campus. "We want to introduce a
divestment bill on campus and were wondering if you might assist us with
speakers..."

Let this new stage begin.

In gratitude,

Cecilie Surasky,
Deputy Director
Jewish Voice for Peace

PS: Read Sydney Levy and SJP's Yaman Salahi's sharp response to a joint
Jewish institutional letter against the divestment bill. We also tweeted the
entire hearing which you can check out at Mondoweiss PPS: Inspired? Feel
free to make a generous giftso we can continue this important work.

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