Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine and the Abolitionist Movement in Schools get together to talk Anti-Palestinian Racism - Buckle up this is a long one...
Penn FJP is holding a webinar on "anti-Palestinian racism" connected to the abolitionist movement in schools, Ismael Jimenez the Philly School District head of Social Studies Curriculum
Penn FJP is holding a webinar on “anti-Palestinian racism” in medicine, the media and education. Why is this on a K-12 tracker site? The event is being advertised by the WEB Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction - a group with ties to K-12 educators. Furthermore, one of the event panelists is an elementary school teacher and Director of Education and Programming at Philadelphia based Freedom Side School.
The event is advertised as ‘virtual interactive discussion exploring manifestations & implications of anti-Palestinian racism in the fields of medicine, the media, & education’ - or in other, less fancy, words, it’s on Zoom and there’ll be breakout rooms to discuss anti-Palestinian racism in medicine, media and education…
To register for the event, you must “acknowledge the premise” that anti-Palestinian racism exists. The survey they link to is here https://antipalestinianracism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Anti-Palestinian-Racism-Survey-Preliminary-Report-Findings-2024.pdf
It relies, of course, on the definition of anti-Palestinian racism put forward by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association. For more on the definition and its troubling impacts on free speech and education follow the links
Panelists are Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle, assistant professor neurology at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide (DAG). DAG was founded in November last year and the only genocide it seems particularly bothered about is the one not happening in Gaza. DAG came under criticism for planning to hold a protest outside the Washington Holocaust Museum. DAG’s fiscal sponsor is Jetpac - an organization whose role is to increase the political influence of Muslim-Americans. Jetpac itself receives money from the Tides Foundation, the Proteus Fund and the Barzinji Family Foundation which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
DAG also pals around with Medea Benjamin of CodePink - here are DAG members claiming that Israel’s war against Hamas will lead to another pandemic!
Here is DAG advertising a protest alongside the extremist WithinOurLifetime.
Next is Dr. Thea Abu El-Haj - Professor of Education at Barnard College, Columbia University. Dr. Abu El-Haj is a staunch advocate of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel and also came to the defense of the student encampments and protestors at Columbia who occupied Hamilton Hall. In an article for Truthout, she wrote:
“What if, instead, we recognized student protesters as educators, fully engaged teachers and learners in our community?...Protesting the unfolding genocide in Gaza, they refuse to begin the story on October 7, asking instead that we understand the conflict in relation to the history of Nakba, occupation, apartheid and siege. These historical questions lead to others about the roles and responsibilities that we in the United States (and by extension, our institutions of higher education) have to take for justice in Palestine.”
She speaks positively about Columbia University Apartheid Divest - a group that has stated it believes in “liberation by any means necessary - including armed resistance…violence is the only path forward.”
Arwa Mahdawi is from that venerable publication, The Guardian which has distinguished itself in horrific and one-sided opinion when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war. Mahdawi’s animus to Israel is such that even The Guardian had to step in and correct her reporting.
And finally we have Reem Abuelhaj is Director of Education and Programming at Freedom Side School. The “vision” of the school is to turn their young students into the next generation of activists where they become “practitioners of transformative justice” in a world where prisons are obsolete.
“At Freedom Side School, our mission is to provide a free elementary school education grounded in abolitionist values to a mixed-age group of children who are directly impacted by mass incarceration. Our school structure and curriculum are founded on central tenets of the abolition movement: that punishment and prisons are fundamentally harmful, that with resources and support everyone can grow and transform, and that true freedom is collective. Our goal is to work in partnership with grassroots organizations to give students access to organizing tools and frameworks, and provide them with ample opportunities to take action in their communities. We work to incorporate transformative and restorative justice practices into all aspects of community life, and we are committed to processes that address the root causes of conflict. We are dedicated to critical, anti-oppressive curricula that emerge from the passions, curiosities, and interests of our students. In order to do this, we are committed to low student:teacher ratios, and our educators are dedicated to seeing and attending to the whole of each child.”
The philosophy of the school is that “Children should be told the truth and supported to think critically about our world. Educators have a responsibility and obligation to teach about oppression and injustice honestly and with intention, and to care for students as they navigate difficult truths.”
“The movement to abolish prisons is built on the understanding that punishment and prisons do not heal communities, but rather cause further harm. In the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Abolition is about presence, not absence. It's about building life-affirming institutions.” Abolitionists envision a world where communities are well-resourced, thriving, and able to meet the needs of every member. As abolitionists, we are invested in building healing communities that holistically support individuals when harm occurs. We are building a world where we respond to harm and violence by uprooting and working to transform the conditions that caused the harm.”
“Abolitionist teaching comes out of the broader abolition movement, and out of educators’ commitment to critical pedagogy, or: a way of engaging students that honestly and appropriately confronts oppression and injustice. Where the abolition movement seeks to build a system of justice where the dignity and humanity of all people is protected, abolitionist teaching extends this vision to all children, in all schools. This movement within education is motivated by educators’ understanding that, right now, many schools employ punitive and restrictive methods that mimic prisons and the criminal-legal system, and that these schools are failing and harming our children. At Freedom Side School, we are bringing the principles and practice of abolition directly to the children whose lives are touched by incarceration. In an abolitionist classroom, we respond to harm, conflict, and disruption with restorative and transformative practices. We address the underlying need that is causing the harmful or disruptive behavior, and take collective responsibility for harm that happens in our community.”
Given Abuelhaj’s involvement, it makes sense that the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction would be tagged in the Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine instagram post.
The school’s goal is to train “aspiring and current movement organizers in how to understand the world and how to change it. We do so through a combination of history, political economy, strategy, and skills. Through concise readings and seminar-style discussion, students study the historical emergence of the world we inhabit and the forces shaping it today. In the process, they develop an understanding of the mutual constitution, past and present, of economic exploitation (capitalism), racial domination (slavery and colonization), and sexual and gendered oppressions (patriarchy)—which, understood together, provide a roadmap for the sorts of movements and strategies that will be their undoing.
Our students are aspiring revolutionaries and abolitionists of all ages and backgrounds who want to acquire the analytical tools and practical skills necessary to set political change into motion and sustain it through struggle. But we seek above all to help build the leadership capacity of organic intellectuals, those most directly impacted by oppressive structures—policing, mass incarceration, environmental racism, and poverty—and those closest to the struggles to dismantle them.”
Unsurprisingly, the school has some strong opinions when it comes to Israel and its conflict with Hamas. In an article for Teen Vogue, representatives for the school wrote this:
“We enter the summer of 2024 with Palestine on our minds and in our hearts — hearts that swell with admiration at the steadfastness of those resisting. Neither the struggle nor the repression with which it has been met are new.”
Ismael Jimenez, the Director of Social Studies curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia, is on the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction advisory board. Jimenez, like his friend Sharif El-Mekki, is a proponent of Paulo Friere’s belief that education is a tool of and for political activism.
In the above post, Jimenez tags his friend Sharif El-Mekki and the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School. El-Mekki follows the school on instagram and they follow him back:
El-Mekki and Jimenez are close. In this instagram post, El-Mekki comes to Jimenez and Keziah Ridgeway’s defense:
El-Mekki and Jimenez also host a weekly podcast together for EdPost. For your viewing pleasure, here is there long-winded but short-on-facts discussion of Israel/Palestine -
From Canary Mission: “During the podcast, Jimenez said [00:31:41]: “When we look at October 7th… this didn't happen out of the blue, right? This is generations, right, of folks who have feel like their voice’s been denied.”
“Jimenez then said [00:31:55], referring to the 2018 “March of Return”: “You know, if you actually look at what Gazans have been doing or Palestinians in Gaza have been doing they've been trying to have a right to return march, right? They’ve had ‘freedom rights’ almost. There’s been non-violent protests.”
In another episode of that same podcast, Jimenez and El-Mekki discuss that there “are no white solutions to black problems.”
