West Midlands Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Birmingham:

Saturday 23/11/2019 at 19:00: Centrala: the youth will join a jazz gig and they will sing few folk songs. Address:  Unit 4, Minerva works, 158 Fazeley Street, Birmingham, B5 5RT.

Sunday 24/11/2019 at 17:00. Midland Art Centre. The film will be screened with another film about Gaza. Panel discussion with Clare Short. Address Midlands Art Centre, Cannon Hill,  B12 9QH

Monday 25/11/2019. 17.00-19.00. Ironbridge Institute Lecture, Birmingham University. Aston Webb Building Room WG12.  C19 Aston building

Tuesday 26/11/2019 at 19:00 Walsall friendship association with Kouber. St Paul’s Crossing, Darwall St, WS1 1DA.

Wednesday:  27/11/2019

Coventry University Seminar at12:30-14:00 at Richard Crossman building RC 123

Birmingham at  19:00 Centrala, Digbeth.  The film, music and discussion.  Address: Unit 4, Minerva works, 158 Fazeley Street, Birmingham, B5 5RT

Thursday 28/11/2019: 18:30 The  Yemeni Community Association,  Greets Green Access Centre, Tildasley St, West Bromwich, B70 9SJ

Friday    29/11/2019    Bristol  at 18:00,  Bristol Palestine Museum  Palestine Museum Bristol BS1 2HG

Saturday 30/11/2019  Exeter   14:00, Exeter Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Sunday 1/12/19 Coventry Palestine solidarity Group, at 2 pm at St Peter’s Church, Coventry.

For further information please contact:

Dr Elly Harrowell, Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, Elly.Harrowell@coventry.ac.uk

Dr Marwan Darweish, Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, M.Darweish@Coventry.ac.uk

WMPSC is supporting the national day of action and has called for a protest outside the New Street Branch, 130 New St, Birmingham B2 4JU of HSBC in Birmingham City Centre. Protesters will be there from 1 pm to 2:30 pm. HSBC invests in and provides financial services for companies providing military technology and weapons to Israel, which the Israeli military has used to commit war crimes and systematically violate international law. This includes investments of nearly £100 million in the company Caterpillar.

Caterpillar supplies the Israeli military with bulldozers which are weaponised and used to assist in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, including the demolition of Palestinian homes, schools, villages and civilian infrastructure – in order to make way for the ever-expanding illegal Israeli Jewish-only settlements.

Since 1967 the Israeli military has demolished nearly 50,000 Palestinian houses, and Caterpillar equipment has been involved at many of these demolitions, which amount to war crimes. Currently Caterpillar Bulldozers are being used by the Israeli military to aid in the demolition of 70 Palestinian homes in the Sur Baher village in East Jerusalem. Over 1000 Palestinians are being displaced from their homes, forcing them to live in exile

Caterpillar also provides equipment used to reinforce Israel’s apartheid infrastructure, including Israel’s checkpoints, seperation wall alongside the West Bank as well as the wall in Gaza, and for the construction of illegal settlements and settlement infrastructure on stolen Palestinian land.

Public pressure led HSBC to divest from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, but HSBC remains deeply complicit with Israel’s war crimes.

Mobilise and take creative action at your local HSBC branch, join in with local actions, spread the word on social media and call on HSBC to #StopArmingIsrael!

Transport from the Midlands: Please Join us

Walsall – 7.45am, Abu Bakr Mosque, Wednesbury Road
Carrs Lane Church 8-15 am, Carrs Lane Opposite  Moore St Station

Birmingham Central Mosque- 8.30am 180 Belgrave Middleway, Birmingham B12 0XS

Tickets: £15, concessions £10, £20 sponsor a seat

To book children / asylum seekers / refugees / can’t afford £10 please email admin@westmidspsc.org

or visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/west-midlands-national-demonstration-for-palestine-tickets-60273733359?ref=eios&aff=eios

6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Midlands Arts Centre Canon Hill Park

Birmingham B12 9QH

Click on the picture to book your ticket for the event

The event has been organised to remember and celebrate the lives of departed Birmingham activists for Palestinian human rights, Jolyon Jones, Linda Pugh and Ian Murray, all of whom made daily, long term contributions to the activities of the WMPSC, both locally and nationally. The event will also pay homage to the late Jeremy Hardy by showing his acclaimed film “Jeremy Hardy Vs The Israeli Army”.

VENUE: Unite the Union, Heneage Street West,  Birmingham B7 4AX

Pinkwashing is a propaganda strategy used to conceal human rights violation through the facade of support for LGBTQ+ rights, used by apartheid Israel and corporations such as HSBC.

HSBC invest over £800million in and provide syndicated loans worth up to £19billion for, companies arming Israel. One such company is Caterpillar, who supplies the Israeli military, with specifically designed weaponised bulldozers. These bulldozers are used specifically to demolish Palestinian homes, factories, agricultural land and civilian infrastructure, including water pipes and networks on Palestinian territory assigned by the UN. Caterpillar also provides equipment to: reinforce the apartheid walls in Gaza and the Westbank and for the construction of settlements and settlement infrastructure on stolen Palestinian land, in violation of UN Security Council resolution 242.

To obscure their complicity, and protect their branding, HSBC provides sponsorship and funding for LGBT+ pride festivals across the world, and in the UK they are the main sponsors of Birmingham pride. This funding acts to ‘pinkwash’ HSBC’s image, concealing their involvement in human rights abuses.

Palestinian LGBTQ+ group, Aswat, have called for transnational solidarity to campaign against HSBC’s sponsorship of Birmingham pride:

“From queers to queers, we want to call on all UK groups and specifically groups in Birmingham not to accept HSBC’s sponsorship, in the name of transnational solidarity. We, Palestinians, want to send companies and states who pinkwash their crimes a clear message: oppressed groups know too well that no one will be free unless we are all free, and no group’s rights should be used to cover the violation of any other group’s rights.”

2019 is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that led to the birth of the modern Pride movement – but the struggle for ‘Absolute Freedom for All’ – the original aim of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) who founded Pride inspired by the Black Power Movement – is far from over. States, corporations and institutions at the heart of the military-industrial-complex that makes billions of pounds of profit from a weapons industry that continues to murder queers (and others) across the world use Pride as a tokenistic event to try to clean up their reputation – and we ain’t going to stand for it!

Come to this public meeting to learn more, get involved and be part of a movement to campaign for Birmingham pride to drop HSBC as a sponsor and to highlight the pinkwashing nature of Israel and complicit companies such as HSBC.

Speakers:

Dan Glass – from ‘No Pride in War’ and Beautiful Trouble – a book, web toolbox and international network of artist-activist trainers whose mission is to make grassroots movements more creative and more effective.

Sara Khan – Liberation and Access Officer at University of Manchester Students’ Union, member of the NUS LGBT+ committee, active around QTIPOC, LGBT+ rights and decolonising campaigns.

Mastering a unique combination of Arabic percussion rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies and the band’s signature brand of hip hop, DAM has grown to become one of the most influential acts of the Middle East’s urban music scene.

Heralded as “the spokesman of a new generation”, DAM began working together in the late 1990s as the first Palestinian hip hop crew and among the first to rap in Arabic. Struck by the uncanny resemblance of the reality of the streets in Tupac’s video to their own neighbourhood of Lyd, they were inspired to tell their stories through this potent new medium. In 2016 Maisa Daw officially joined DAM with the release of “#Who_You_R”, an incendiary critique of social hypocrisy and norms. For their UK tour, they will be joined by their live band featuring singer, songwriter & pianist Nancy Mkaabal and DJ Bruno Cruz.

Captivating and cunning, the group has been featured in Rolling Stone, Vibe, Q, Reuters, and The New York Times, and has appeared on MTV, CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera. Recently signing with UK label Cooking Vinyl (Goldie, Groove Armada, Trio Joubran, 47Soul) they are gearing to release their new album “Between Hannah and Mannah” and will be playing at Birmingham’s The Crossing Digbeth , High Street Diretend B5 5SU as part of their highly-anticipated England tour.

Opening for DAM on this tour is none other than DJ Sotusura. The ever-cunning and creative DJ’s canny ability to mix classic Arabic samples with hip hop, as well as his dexterity on the turntables, has allowed him to emerge as one of the most proactive members of the Middle East’s regional hip-hop scene over the past 15 years.

DAM’s 2019 England Tour is supported by Arts Council England.

– The Crossing is wheelchair accessible.
– Show is 18+.