A letter to Chancellor Blumenthal in solidarity with Palestinian and Black Liberation

Chancellor Blumenthal:

As students working for Palestinian and Black liberation, we are disgusted with you and your ‘chillingly’ racist email to the campus community. In your email, you dismissed the Student Union Assembly's democratic decision on November 17th to reinstate a call for the University of California to divest from companies that profit from the exploitation and oppression of Palestinians, Jews of Color, and migrants from Southeast Asia and East Africa. It is significant that you sent this email the day after over one hundred solidarity protests against the constant racism and discrimination Black students experience took place on college campuses across the country.

Given the fact that the UC Regents are about to vote on redefining anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism, we recognize the opportunistic nature of your email and it is clearly a part of the University of California’s continued systematic attempt to silence activism around Palestine. We also recognize that your acknowledgement of the Black Lives Matter movements in solidarity with the University of Missouri was used to silence the activism and experiences of pro-Palestinian students as well as to distance anti-Black discrimination and actions from this campus. You act as if anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, and anti-Black discrimination and racism does not occur on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz under your tunnel-vision leadership. We know firsthand this is not true and this disgusting racism and discrimination is not only present on this campus, your email serves to encourage and help it to thrive.

Yes, Chancellor Blumenthal, universities are microcosms of our society. In addition to silencing and targeting students involved in solidarity work with Palestinian peoples, your institution continues to perpetuate anti-black racism on this campus. Black students on campus organized an action in solidarity with students at the University of Missouri and throughout that day and on countless others, they shared some of their daily and constant experiences of anti-Black racism on this campus. Not only did you strategically disregard these movements, but you also ignored and continue to ignore the violent conditions that produced the need for students to organize.

Your attempt to exempt this university from widespread racism, and to instead relegate it to other campuses is irresponsible, unaccountable, and in line with centuries of denying Black people's lived experiences that are not only a part of this microcosm you reference, but the very foundation our society was built on and fortified with. Furthermore, while engaging in the erasure of the individual and structural experiences of anti-black racism that Black students face on this campus daily, you grossly appropriated the national Black Lives Matter movements as a way to discredit students on this campus who are committed to the liberation of Palestinian peoples and their land. Your employment of this divisive tactic—rooted in white supremacist and settler colonial logics—is pitiful. We refuse this tactic and we refuse this division. Finally, you are willfully ignorant about the growing and powerful Black-Palestinian solidarity movement, in which Palestinians have shown their unwavering support for the Black Lives Matter Movement’s fight against the legal lynchings of Black people by police and vigilantes.

In attempting to pit us against each other and silence us, you have failed. We have come together to fight your white supremacist rhetoric and policies on this campus. We will no longer bear the burden of your and your institution’s injustices and as students on this campus in full solidarity with struggles of Palestinian and Black peoples, we will speak up against your violent silencing and your violent use of power.

Together, we want to know:

•where was our email when Tammi Benjamin called members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and members of Muslim Student Association (MSA) terrorists and then launched baseless legal attacks against them?
•where was our email when Middle Eastern students were filmed and called terrorists at the UCSA divestment meeting?
•where was our email when UCSC students took to social media to threaten harm against Black students organizing for their lives?
•where was our email when UCSC Muslim students were verbally attacked with anti-Muslim chants on campus transportation? Or when, on the same day, a Muslim woman wearing a hijab at Science Hill was verbally harassed?
•where was our email when a group of white students forced their way into the Rosa Parks African American Themed House (RPAATH) and hatefully vandalized the space?

Your history of silence is our answer. In recognition of your absolute incompetence and steadfast defense of white supremacy, we demand your resignation.

https://www.facebook.com/UCSCSJP/posts/1072490519437552

Committee for Justice in Palestine at UC Santa Cruz
https://santacruzcjp.wordpress.com/