By Hugo M

From 24-26 May, the People’s Conference for Palestine was held in Detroit, Michigan (USA). This was a chance for 3,600 pro-Palestine activists from across North America to reflect – in person – on the developments in the solidarity movement over the last seven months.

Red Ant spoke with MJ, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) Los Angeles contingent to the conference, “who’ve been organising around the genocide in Gaza for the past six months”. For this group, preparation for the conference included reading The Trinity of Fundamentals, a book by Waleem Rafeedie on Palestinian resistance and recently translated into English.

The conference was endorsed by over 450 – mostly Palestinian led – organisations including Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Palestinian Feminist Collective, Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP), “as well as organisations that stand more broadly for anti-imperialism, for socialism, for a better system”. These organisations include the PSL, the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the People’s Forum NYC, Breakthrough News (leftist reporting) and On the Line (a news channel focussing on US labour struggles).

While there was a “very varied” selection of groups present, the conference struck an overall revolutionary tone – both opening and closing with references to world revolution. In the opening remarks, Yara Shoufani, a leader in the PYM from Canada, said, “Gaza stands at the centre of the world: waging a historic battle not only against the Zionist enemy and its backers, but in service of world revolution.” The conference’s concluding remarks referred to words from from Ghassan Kanafani:

“Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the World Revolution.”

A major theme of the conference was that:

“the movement for Palestine is very intertwined with the movement for better workers’ rights in the US itself, for anti-imperialism everywhere, for the end to occupation everywhere. All of this being tied together, and also being tied to climate change and the destruction that war brings”.

Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in congress, made a surprise appearance at the conference. In her address, she called out Joe Biden as “an enabler” and said, “we’re not going to forget in November”. MJ noted that people were glad that at least someone ‘in power’ was listening, but at the same time, the politicians who want to listen to the people are unable to “do anything about it”. “People have really started to see that it’s a problem within the system itself, and it’s not a Democrat or Republican problem.”

One featured speaker, Palestinian journalist and activist Sana’ Daqqah delivered a plenary session, “Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement and the Struggle for Liberation”. It is estimated that over 8000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons. Sana’s martyred husband, Walid Daqqah, died in prison earlier this year after 38 years of incarceration. Sana’s daughter, Milad Daqqahn, also attended.

The Palestinian Youth Movement explained the rationale for the conference at its opening. MJ summarised this as “we’ve spent six months doing all of these things, we want to talk about all of it and see how we can move forward”. The conference was an opportunity for North American organisers to look back on previous actions and make assessments about what to do next. Doing that in communication with Palestinian organisers was “very effective” – “it really brought the movement together, connecting the diaspora to the people on the ground.”

Major upcoming mobilisations were announced, including the June 8 Red Line protest in Washington DC called in response to the Israeli bombing of a refugee camp in Rafah that killed at least 21 people. The date marks 8 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza, as well as the 57^th anniversary of the ‘Six-Day War’. Biden had previously said that an invasion of Rafah would be a red line for the US, but in reality he has not changed critical US support Israel even after multiple massacres in Rafah. The call for the June 8 protest says:

Biden can’t draw the line, but we can. On June 8, we will come together from across the country and surround the White House. Wearing red, and raising our demands high, we will show the world that we are the red line.

Stop the genocide! We are the red line! Free Palestine!

The Palestinian Youth Movement also announced their new campaign, ‘Mask off Maersk’, which was unveiled at the “Arms Embargo Now!” panel. This is a much more targeted campaign, focussing on one specific shipping company, Maersk, that ships weapons to Israel from the US. The aim is for Maersk to cut ties with Israel and stop arms shipments. According to the PYM, “since weapons are not the entirety of their business, we believe this is winnable”.

In the plenary session titled, “The Movement for Palestine in North America”, Mohammed Nabulsi, a PYM member, addressed the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

“We don’t put our faith in these institutions or in these strategies necessarily on their own, but understand them as a part of a broader struggle, that needs every front mobilised in this moment to bring this genocide to an end.”

A major point of discussion for students at the conference was how to make sure the energy built up on campuses doesn’t dissipate over the long summer break – with emphasis on the importance of integrating the student and community struggles.

MJ argued:

While the student movement is on an ebb right now, the movement [as a whole] is definitely going to pick up, especially because the encampments set off such a fire … with the official invasion of Rafah now, along with the red line protest … the elections coming up, means that there is going to be a lot of energy and a lot of mobilisation around this issue.

Summarising the historic Detroit conference MJ told Red Ant:

It was a huge success to see so many organisers come out and engage in good-natured dialogue over how we can contribute to the movement for Palestinian liberation, and also to learn from the lessons of the past six months, our own but also other people’s experiences.