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Speakers include:
Sabrine Abed
Amira A.
Leila Abu-Orf
Kali Akuno
Emily Faye Ratner
Devorah Levy-Pearlman
BIOS
Sabrine Abed is a human rights attorney here in the city where she grew up.
Amira A. is a Palestinian socialist organizer based in New Orleans by way of Memphis and Beit Jubreen. Her work is at the intersection of Palestine, Southern liberation, and labor organizing. She has organized locally, regionally, and nationally within the Palestinian liberation movement, specifically within the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement against Israeli apartheid. She was one of the lead organizers of the New Orleans Palestine Solidarity Committee (NOPSC) and their efforts to pass a human rights ordinance in New Orleans City Council in 2018, becoming the first US city in the South to pass a BDS ordinance (prior to Zionist backlash). Since then, she has helped lead the Deadly Exchange campaign, the campaign to end US-Israeli police exchange programs, working at the intersections of abolition, Black liberation, and Palestinian liberation. She also led the effort to unionize Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in 2020, becoming the first organization in the US-based Palestinian liberation movement to unionize. She has since founded an organization called the Palestine Labor Network, which is a national network of Palestinian leaders, Palestine solidarity activists, union members, and labor leaders seeking to dismantle Israeli apartheid and strengthen support and solidarity with Palestine within the US Labor Movement. Her family is originally from Beit Jubreen, though they have remained in exile in refugee camps in Gaza and Jordan. She was the first person in her family to return in over 50 years.
Leila Abu-Orf is a Palestinian American with family in Gaza. Her father was born and raised in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip and was involved in the first Intifada. Leila lived in Ramallah in the West Bank as a little girl but hasnt been able to return to visit her family since 1997. Her father was supposed to make a visit to see his family in Gaza for the first time in over a decade at the end of the month, and now shes just hoping that there will still be a Gaza for her and her family to one day visit.
Kali Akuno is co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, a network of worker cooperatives and community-led programs that sustain and grow a democratic, just and sustainable economy in Jackson, MS. Among these programs is the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust, which allows community members to collectively steward the land and creates opportunities for affordable property ownership. See more info here.
Emily Faye Ratner is a media maker and lawyer based in New Orleans whose work focuses on state violence. She has organized with local groups to challenge law enforcement violence, incarceration, and occupation and imperialism, including working with Safe Streets Strong Communities, the Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition, and New Orleans Palestine Solidarity (NOLAPS). She is also a member of the PATOIS organizing collective. Her criminal defense practice focuses on finding paths to freedom for people sentenced to life in prison, and her civil rights practice focuses on revealing the everyday violence implicit in American policing and incarceration. Currently pursuing a PhD in Justice Studies at the University of New Orleans, her scholarship focuses on the strategies that have expanded and contracted freedom within contemporary and historical Louisiana.
Devorah Levy-Pearlman is a poet, essayist, and organizer raised in Central California and based in New Orleans. She is grounded in the anti-Zionist Jewish community and in liberation struggles building beyond colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism worldwide.
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LocationJohn Thompson Legacy Center (View)
1212 St. Bernard Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70116
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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