What Black and Palestinian People Teach Us About Strength, Struggle, and Solidarity

An Evening With Linda Sarsour and Zellie Imani

Last time a speaker this controversial came to the University of Washington, someone got shot. But if you were on campus that Friday night, you wouldn’t have a clue.

Silence resounded. Empty tents from some unrelated event filled the campus square situated afront the lecture hall where the event took place.

Entering campus to a ghost town greeting, you’d never guess that one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2017 and Fortune’s 50 Greatest Leaders of 2017 was speaking that night. Hell, I didn’t even know. I was there to support a friend.

A few days before, Samira Khadar – a talented, Seattle-area, Palestinian-American organizer – shared on Instagram that she’d be speaking on a panel about “Palestine and the African American Struggle.”

I didn’t ask any questions; I barely looked at the flyer except to note the date and time. Once I read the title, I sent a reply. “We’re there 🙏🏽”

If I’d bothered to read the flyer, I would have seen that Zellie Imani, a Black activist and organizer unknown to me at the time, was speaking alongside Linda Sarsour, that evening’s superstar.

Linda is a fierce and dedicated community organizer who attracts anger and ire from liberals and conservatives alike because of her unabashed pride in her Palestinian ancestry and her perpetual love for Palestinian people.

This anger tends to follow her wherever she goes. However, judging by the way she jokes about the lawsuit filed by students at U Mass Amherst against her, it’s safe to say her critics’ attacks don’t deter her.

She seems to snack on them. How else would you explain the Google alert for her name that serves as her personal, impact barometer? “If no one’s mad at me,” she said on stage, “I’m doing something wrong.”

But with the campus so quiet that day, I can’t help but wonder, why did none of the usual indignation follow Sarsour to Seattle?

Could it be that Seattle’s supposedly progressive political sphere has come around to support the Palestinian Liberation Movement? Doubtful, given Seattle City Council voted in 2021 to continue the deadly exchange and allow the Seattle Police Department to continue training with the Israeli military.

If not that, then could it be that between a war raging in Ukraine and pandemic lingering everywhere else, people have forgotten about the plight facing Palestinians? Possible, given the media all but dismisses anti-Black racism unless there’s graphic footage of a gruesome murder flooding social media.

Though, beyond that, could it be that the student organizers might not have done their best job promoting the event and spreading the word about who was speaking? Admittedly quite likely, given the modest, almost meager, turn out.

Although perhaps, above all, it was because the event had nothing to do with Linda Sarsour herself. Yes, she was one of two keynote speakers that evening, and she delivered an impassioned and empowering speech, but the event itself focused on the solidarity that has long existed between Palestinians and African Americans, and how we continue to build it.

Perhaps the critics, who come crawling out the shadows whenever Sarsour steps on a campus, were scared away by the strength of oppressed people standing together.

While that bit of conjecture can never be proven true or false, it nonetheless gets us to the point of that evening and this piece: Why solidarity between Black and Palestinian people, people who face such similar oppressions, is important and what we can do to strengthen it.

The oppressions of Black and Palestinian people are so aligned and solidarity so important that Angela Davis, in her book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, said, “those of us who identify with the struggles of Black people for freedom in the United States of America should clearly identify with our Palestinian sisters and brothers today.”

I know, for myself, when I hear of Palestinian women singing coded songs to aid their husbands escape from prison, I can’t help but remember the chain gain songs sung among enslaved Africans to guide fugitives along the Underground Railroad.

When I see laws passed by the Israeli parliament banning the marriage between Israeli citizens and Palestinians, I can’t help but think of the anti-miscegenation that were at one point in place throughout 38 states in the Union.

When I see militarized police mobilize in the streets of Black neighborhoods, I can’t help but picture how that same scenario has played out countless times in countless communities throughout occupied Palestine.

The realities of Israeli apartheid are why Nelson Mandela said, “we know all too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” That’s why everyone had gathered together on that ominous Friday, May 13th, 2022.

If there were ever an ideal time to talk about solidarity between Black and Palestinian people, it was that day, surrounded as it was by present tragedy and tragic memory.

Two days before, on May 11th, Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli soldiers while she was wearing a helmet and press vest.

The next day, May 12th, marked the one year anniversary of the launch of Israel’s most recent major assault on Gaza, in which they fired missiles that leveled dozens of buildings – including apartments and the offices for several news outlets – killing almost 200 civilians and displacing hundreds more.

Then, the day of the event, May 13th, 2022, commemorated the 37th anniversary of the day the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a house belonging to the Black radical organization, MOVE, in the middle of a residential neighborhood; the resulting fire killed 11 men, women, and children and burned down 61 homes after the police ordered the fire department not to put out the blaze.

And, though none of us could have expected it, the day after the event, on May 14th, a white supremacist terrorist stormed the only grocery store in the Blackest zip code near his hometown in upstate New York and massacred ten people, devastating one community and terrorizing thousands more who were, yet again, left wondering when some crazed white man would come for them and theirs.

To cap it off, May 15th was the 74th anniversary of the Nakba, the Catastrophe which saw, between 1947 and 1949, over 750,000 Palestinians forced to become refugees as thousands more were murdered and hundreds of villages destroyed and which has continued in new and different but no less brutal and violent ways through to today.

And all this was but one week in the recent memory of the long struggles that African Americans and Palestinians have endured. This is why – as the 403-year veterans of catastrophe, colonization, and genocide – Black people in America have been long-term allies and accomplices of Palestinians.

This is why Black and Palestinian people must continue to build solidarity. This is why Black folks and Palestinians came together on the UW campus that night to hear from Linda and Zellie as they discussed the history of Black-Palestinian solidarity and how we add our own chapter to it.

Zellie took to the stage first, and his dedication to the Black Freedom Struggle and to building solidarity between his community and other oppressed people, Palestinians in particular, was palpable.

When he’s not in the classroom educating and inspiring Black and brown youth, Zellie is an organizer, activist, and revolutionary working with Black Lives Matter Paterson. From the second he danced up the steps wearing a black dubaku shirt with a silver maze of stitching embroidered on the chest and a black beanie crowning his head; thoughtfulness, intelligence, and passion rolled off the young king.

His thoughtfulness surfaced when he chose to start his talk by centering the audience in the space we shared. He had us place our feet, firm on the floor. And take deep breaths.

While we breathed – In. and Out. – his measured tone reminded us of our presence in the present, on lands that are not ours: lands that were seized from the Coast Salish by White supremacist settlers in the same way that the lands of Palestine have been pried from the hands of its indigenous people by Zionist settlers.

With the audience grounded, he told a series of stories to remind us of the perseverance, persistence, and resilience of Black and Palestinian people in the face of unending oppression.

He reminded us of how, in May 2020, amid the first wave of a global pandemic, with government officials at every level telling everyone to stay inside, Black people and their allies swarmed the streets after the brutal murder of George Floyd unfolded before the eyes of the world.

He reminded us of how, a year later, in May 2021, with the pandemic still raging, Palestinians and their allies took to the streets as families were forced from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, worshippers once again assaulted in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and civilians murdered as missiles rained on Gaza.

In both cases, Black and Palestinian people showed up for one another, and these were far from the first times Black and Palestinian people have shown up for each other – not in Zellie’s life, and certainly not in the long life of our ongoing struggles.

One of the most well-documented instances of Black-Palestinian solidarity occurred in Ferguson in 2014, and Zellie was part of it. After the Ferguson police murdered Michael Brown, thousands took to the streets to demand accountability.

As these activists put their bodies on the line night after night, the Ferguson police and National Guard deployed tactics similar to those the Israeli military uses to quell the rebellions that rage and swell within occupied Palestine.

When Palestinian activists saw these scenes play out on social media, they shared strategies for how to counter the crowd control tactics used by the police, like using whole milk to sooth exposure to tear gas, using traffic cones and jugs of water to stop the gas’s spread, fashioning homemade gas masks out of two-liter bottles, and more.

This spontaneous solidarity helped the activists resist being silenced and fight even harder for accountability. This event deepened the bond between Black Americans and the people of Palestine that has existed for generations.

While Zellie spoke to the present state of the solidarity, when Linda Sarsour took the stage – red hijab wrapped tight around her head giving her the appearance of a warrior ready to don a suit of armor – she started by speaking to the legacy of solidarity between Palestinians and African Americans. Her first example: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In 1967, nineteen years after the Nakba began, with the majority of the world silent on the crimes committed against Palestine and Palestinians, under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture), SNCC would become the first civil rights group to take a stance other than silence on the colonization of Palestine.

Though SNCC was the first civil rights group to stand in explicit solidarity with the people of Palestine, they were following in the footsteps of militants like Malcolm X, and they wouldn’t be the last.

A few years after SNCC’s position paper, when the passions of the Black Panther Party burned bright and inspired a fresh wave of young radicals to rise up against oppression, the “Free Palestine” shouts heard their echo in the “Power to the People” chants, the Black Panthers formed close bonds with the Palestinian Liberation Movement, even inspiring a group of “Israeli Black Panthers.”

Even when the Panthers’ flame burned itself out, the bond between Black and Palestinian people remained, and the solidarity would be displayed on a major stage again by Reverend Jesse Jackson – before, during, and after his presidential campaigns. But the solidarity doesn’t stop there.

Once both Zellie and Linda finished detailing the history of Black-Palestinian solidarity, both they each turned their attention to what our generation of the struggle can do to build and strengthen this connection. During their respective keynotes and the panel which followed, three themes came up: show up, share stories, speak out.

Each is crucial. While you could skip straight to speaking out, if you haven’t heard another’s story, you may end up speaking from a place of ignorance; and if you aren’t showing up for people, how are you supposed to hear their stories in the first place?

Both Zellie, Linda, and their co-panelists – Samira Khadar and Rabal Hassouneh – discussed the power and importance of simply showing up. Not only is showing up foundational to building relationships with people and communities, but it can lead to beautiful things.

Zellie shared how, beyond the events of Ferguson ’14, he and his comrades have continued to show up for their Palestinian neighbors, and the Palestinian community has continued to show up for them.

This has created an interdependence between the Black and Palestinian communities in Paterson, New Jersey, where they can count on each other to respond when the other calls for aid. Their cohesion even led to the creation of a community fridge full of free food for their neighbors in need.

That level of mutual trust and reliance is only possible by showing up time after time because, as Linda put it, “solidarity is a verb.”

Solidarity is a daily doing that, over time, builds bridges across the artificial divides of identity. To engage in that endeavor, trust must be built.

How do you trust someone you do not know? How do you trust someone who doesn’t show up for you? And that doesn’t just mean showing up when your newsfeed is filled with images of the latest lynching. After all, how can you trust someone to be there when the stakes are high if they’re nowhere to be seen when the stakes are low?

That’s why cultural resistance is so crucial. In the foreword to The Last Earth, a book by Palestinian author, Ramzy Baroud, Ilan Pappe put it this way: “Cultural resistance is either the rehearsal for political resistance or the means employed when political resistance is not possible.”

At its core, cultural resistance is about showing up, sharing space, refusing to be silenced, and refusing to be erased, while creating the communities we want to live in. Cultural resistance can take many forms.

It can take the form of healing circles, potlucks, book clubs, open mics, art nights, and cultural events like this panel discussion itself – which opened with a pop-up market of Black- and Palestinian-owned businesses and closed with an impromptu Dabke lesson.

What matters that people come together to create community. Even if it means stumbling over each other as you learn the steps to a new dance.

Whatever it is that brings you together to create new cultures, strengthen bonds, and prepare for political resistance, it is the sharing of space that matters; because, when we share space with one another, we can share stories.

Through those stories, we can see each other’s humanity, understand another’s lived experience, feel each other’s pain, and build trust with one another.

The importance of storytelling was evident throughout the evening. Not only did both speakers mention it explicitly, they both embodied it.

Instead of barraging the audience with dates and data, they wove stories from their lives and others into the fabric of the two movements to teach us lessons about solidarity and how to build it.

When it came to showing up, Linda made it clear with her stories that she shows up whenever she gets a call as long as she believes she can make an impact, even if others don’t agree.

She told one story of how, in the beginning of the pandemic, videos surfaced on social media of cops beating Black kids for being maskless outside their apartments.

n the face of this blatant abuse of power, despite the lockdown, and even against the advice of some of her sisters in the struggle, she organized community members fill the streets around One Police Plaza in New York City to demand an end to the violent enforcement of the city’s pandemic precautions.

They insisted that the police pass out facemasks instead of fines and fists. Linda and her community won that fight. Then, a few weeks later, in May 2020, she received a call from, as she put it, “that one lawyer everyone calls when there’s a police murder.”

Despite the name that would dominate headlines that May and for months afterwards, the call had nothing to do with George Floyd. He was still breathing. The call was about Breonna Taylor.

Two months before Ben Crump called Linda, the police murdered Breonna Taylor after barging into her apartment and shooting her in her own home. When Linda got the call, no one had said her name.

Ben couldn’t believe that Linda was silent, that the world was silent, about the murder of a young woman who’d done nothing wrong. But Linda was silent for the same reason as everyone else: No one had told the true story of what happened the night cops killed Breonna.

But because Linda showed up when she was called, she met the family and boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, she listened to their stories, and Linda learned what happened.

After meeting with them, she knew she had to act, and she began to strategize everything she could to share the story and raise awareness; she’d even go so far as to move to Louisville, Kentucky to organize with the campaign for accountability. She could only do this because she showed up when she got the call, and she was able to get the truth for herself.

“Don’t let your oppressors,” Linda said, “define the truth for you.”

Unless oppressed people seek out the truth for themselves, the media will manipulate the facts to suit their story. Letting the system define the truth is what kept people complacent about Breonna Taylor’s murder for so long. The media regurgitated, as though it were gospel, the police report stating the shooting was provoked.

As Linda and others sat with Breonna Taylor’s loved ones, it became clear that the police’s version of events didn’t line up with reality. Even though Breonna’s killer was never held accountable, without Linda and others showing up, listening to the stories, and sharing them, the world would never have known the truth.

It is those stories that exposed the truth, and this is needed to address all aspects of oppression. People who are separated by divides of propaganda and lies can bridge those gaps through their stories, but without those stories, the divides remain.

If we don’t hear someone’s truth for ourselves, it’s easy to buy into media stereotypes, which sow distrust between us. Whether implicit or explicit, this is the system’s goal because, when Black and Palestinian people come together, we become more powerful than the sum of our parts.

The same goes for any two groups of oppressed people, whether Indigenous, immigrant, queer, trans, women, poor, or any of the above. The power of oppressed people united against oppression is unlimited.

That’s why, as Linda brought up repeatedly throughout the night, the system tries to divide us at every opportunity by feeding us false narratives.

The oppressive system of White supremacy and imperialism has told us stories that suit its own exploitative ends. These stories shape the lens through which you and I view the world until it filters out certain facts and flattens the way we view the world. Unless we remold or remove this lens, we’ll never see reality unfiltered.

Zellie had the audience that night think about it in this way: Imagine you spend everyday walking around with blue-tinted shades on. The entire world, to you, would be some shade of blue. Only when you remove the glasses would you see the world in all the splendor our slice of the color spectrum has to offer with all its shades and subtleties.

Right now, most people see the world through a lens that turns all Black people into criminals and all Palestinians into terrorists, while simultaneously suggesting that Black and Palestinian people are free to live as we please.

But when you, or anyone, takes the time to listen to the stories of those oppressed peoples, you can challenge that lens and replace it with your own.

When you replace the lens of the dominant narrative, when you no longer accept the lies told to you since you were young, you can see all the work that must be done. You can see that a few reforms to a system founded on the enslavement of Black bodies doesn’t suddenly make Black people free, nor does the end of one assault on Palestine mean that the violence there has ended.

In the United States, Black people are still oppressed in these overpoliced streets; if we weren’t, there wouldn’t be the regular recurrence of recordings that reveal yet more evidence of police violence against Black bodies.

But, as Zellie said, “oppression exists even when viral content of oppression doesn’t.” Black communities across the county and around the world exist in a state of ongoing oppression, and the same is true for Palestinians.

Zellie put it pointedly, “a cease fire in Gaza doesn’t end the violence in Gaza,” but this isn’t what the media would have you believe. The media would have us believe that since Israel pulled its soldiers out of Gaza and stopped bombing civilian buildings, Palestinians in Gaza are free from violence. But the people of Gaza live in a state of constant violence and abuse.

Linda drove this point home as she painted the picture of Gaza.

The people have no control over their water, no control over their electricity, and both are frequently shut off without notice. Military checkpoints keep the people of Gaza isolated; they have no freedom of movement, no one can come in or out.

Both in and outside of Gaza, Palestinians have no recognized government, even the Palestinian Authority has no authority. Linda said that when their leaders applied for visas to present a case at the International Criminal Court to accuse Israel of genocide and war crimes, their visas were denied.

All this occurs because, as both Zellie and Linda stated, Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison. But even outside of Gaza, Palestinians are subject to obscene violence; violence which, even when it affects American-born Palestinians, is met with silence by the United States government.

How could anyone ever imagine that Palestinians are free when the Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, can be killed while wearing body armor with “Press” emblazoned on the chest?

How can anyone imagine that Black people are free when White supremacists, in and out of uniform, continue to target our communities with terrorist attacks?

Even if one of the two communities were free from oppression, how could they rest easy knowing the other remain oppressed? If the Black Radical Tradition has taught me anything, it’s that freedom for some is freedom for none.

This is where the importance of speaking up rises to the fore. By speaking out, elevating the experiences of oppressed people, and amplifying their voices, you can challenge the dominant narrative. When you speak out, you can expose the humanity of the oppressed, and the injustices they endure, to those deluded by the dominant ideology.

This is the final and most critical piece of the solidarity puzzle. You must speak out at every opportunity. Whether for Black, Palestinian, Indigenous, or other oppressed communities, you must speak up against oppression without concern for the consequences. Silence is unacceptable. “If you’re silent,” Linda said, “you’re on the side of the opposition.”

You must use whatever platforms you have to speak out against oppression. However uncomfortable you feel, you must share the stories of oppressed people; you must raise your concerns among your colleagues and coworkers if you’re in the workforce, or challenge your classmates and professors if you’re still in school.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever stage of life you are in, you have an obligation to oppose oppression. Even if all you do to start is have honest, uncomfortable conversations with your friends and family, you have to get involved.

The first step toward demonstrating solidarity and speaking out is showing up. So, when you hear about an opportunity to support your neighbors, show up. When you show up listen to their stories, heed their words, and learn their truths, so you can be in the best possible position to advocate as an ally and act as an accomplice.

This is what Black and Palestinian people have been doing for each other for decades, and this work must continue, between our two communities and with others.

All oppressed peoples must build strong bonds of solidarity to create a collective movement against our common oppressor: the system of white supremacy, imperialism, and global capitalism.

That’s what it will take for us to get free, and it starts with showing up, sharing stories, and speaking out.