Choosing Solidarity: A Legacy
The Freedom, Bound gallery highlights significant moments in the decades of collective, transnational work in pursuit of equality and historical justice. Rather than a timeline of events, the collection is presented as a series of conversations across time and space. To those committed to the pursuit and realization of collective liberation, this dynamic, dialogic account of Black-Palestinian solidarity is an offering of lessons learned in the praxis of joint struggle.
— Nadia Ben-Youssef, Curator, Freedom, Bound, Director Adalah Justice Project
Show Up
The legacy of joint struggle between Black Americans and Palestinians has been marked by prominent delegations and international encounters. Individuals and groups from both communities have traveled to express solidarity, to form relationships, to learn from each other, and to generate collective power.
Study
Solidarity requires a commitment to self-study that is rooted in the narratives, reflections and analyses of communities resisting oppression. Movements for justice then grow in spaces of co-education, where those in solidarity can develop common terms of struggle and a shared vision for liberation.
Self-reflect & Transform
The work of solidarity demands an intersectional analysis of multiple oppressions and multiple struggles. Critical to building a joint struggle is a willingness to engage in a process of self-reflection and to consider the ways in which one benefits from or is complicit in systems of oppression.
Speak Out
Statements of solidarity and written expressions of support between communities make the choice to unite in the face of oppression public. These powerful actions proclaim a common objective and a shared commitment to universal principles of justice and human rights.
Leverage Power
Artists and athletes have used their gifts and platforms to elevate movements for freedom and lend support to those who resist oppression. Through acts and words of solidarity, public figures engage their vast networks in the pursuit of justice, and remind each of us to leverage our individual power and privilege to create social change.
Share Strategies
Advocates and activists in Israel/Palestine and the US use and exchange strategies of resistance to transform the systems of oppression that have been designed to exclude, marginalize, and even criminalize the presence and existence of both Palestinians and Black Americans.
Defy Captivity
Incarceration and confinement are a means of social control, and are counted among the most devastating of the state's strategies to dismantle resistance against oppression. Through their resilience, writings, and transnational organizing behind and beyond bars, political prisoners make clear their opposition to the systems designed to criminalize existence, justify captivity and ill-treatment, and distract from just demands for liberation.
Center Native History
For global movements for justice, the decolonial discourse of indigenous struggles for land, self-determination, and sovereignty is the necessary lens through which to articulate and pursue visions for collective liberation. Imagining the world free from violent conquest, human hierarchy, and domination requires centering the experiences and lives of Native people from Palestine to Turtle Island.
Expect Backlash
Transnational, intersectional struggles for justice represent a profound threat to those with vested interests in global systems of power and oppression. In desperate attempts to conserve an unjust status quo, states have historically deployed the full force of their institutions to try to disrupt, fragment, and defeat movements for collective liberation.
Build a Global Struggle
Internationalist perspectives serve to connect struggles for freedom throughout the world. Thought-leaders, artists and revolutionaries challenging oppression and colonialism have long demonstrated a commitment to collective liberation, and the recognition that individual freedom will always be incomplete so long as others remain unfree.
