There are protests on college campuses all across the country, with students calling for an end to the genocide of innocent, civilian Palestinians, 34,000 of which it has been estimated have died as a result of attacks by Israeli forces who state officially that they are fighting Hamas, the group that kidnapped over 100 Israeli citizens.
Students, however, point out that it’s not Hamas members who are dying by the tens of thousands, and that it is the tax dollars of U.S. citizens and the students’ college tuition fees that are going to pay for this violence.
In late May, Houston Ethnic Media Services held a virtual briefing on the destruction of Gaza where several UH students expressed their commitment to ending the Gaza genocide.
Additionally, outgoing UH Student Government Association president Benjamin Rizk provided an extensive breakdown of past and current UH student-led efforts surrounding this issue.
But first, here are excerpts from the UH students who participated in the HEM virtual briefing. These included Reyna Valdez, a member of UH’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Ahad Adesanya and Jade Madsoup, a student photographer who spent part of his childhood in Lebanon.
HEM Virtual Briefing Participants
“SJP chapters have existed since the 90s, and what we’re seeing now is not a sudden interest in Palestine but rather a movement that’s been building for years and is now at a breaking point with the genocide in Gaza,” shared Valdez, seeking to make it plain that UH students “are not new to this [struggle], they’re true to this.” “I really wanted to get involved in more radical organizing, and the only real space for that at the University of Houston was through the SJP chapter. So that’s why I decided to get involved.”
Valdez added that the roughly 30 years of UH SJP efforts to end what they see as a grave global injustice included and continues to include coordinated activism with several other campuses both in Texas and beyond.
While some have asked why U.S. college students are so laser-focused on Gaza and not raising their voices of protest on other global injustices, Adesanya exemplifies just how wrong that assertion has been.
Like many other college students nationwide, Adesanya’s involvement in Gaza-focused student activism has made him more aware of other global issues.
“Seeing the protests for Palestine made me sit down and realize that I wanted to make a change on my end, or at least try to bring awareness,” said Adesanya. “That’s generally my goal, to try to get as many people around me to be aware of what’s going on and to actually stand up and help out.”
Adesanya says not only is he inspired by the activism of he and his peers, but believes their entire generation can offer the U.S. and the world some much-needed hope.
“I feel like there’s a lot of faith in our generation to bring about change and undo the wrongs set before us,” he added.
Madsoup readily challenges those who say what they would have done “back-in-the-day” if they had been around during slavery, Jim Crow or any number of past atrocities with a simple question – what are you doing now?
“People ask what would you do if you were alive during the Holocaust, and I think this conflict shows who would have actually done something about it,” said Madsoup. “And this is what we would do.”
Like Adesanya and many others, Madsoup has made connections between multiple global struggles against injustice.
“Talking about Palestine has made people also start talking about Sudan, the Congo, and other places facing severe oppression,” said Madsoup, who additionally shared how growing up in Lebanon has made the Gaza conflict personal to him.
“The news in Lebanon affects you every day, so since I was a kid, I was watching what was happening in Syria, what was happening in the Arab world. It kept me educated on the subjects. Now, as an Arab person, as someone who’s been affected directly and indirectly by the conflicts, I can’t look away.”
History of UH Student Activism on Gaza
Here’s Rizk’s breakdown of current and past efforts on the UH campus spearheaded by students regarding this issue.
My First Encounters with Students for Justice in Palestine
The Palestinian Liberation movement at the UH has been present at least ever since I’ve come to UH in Fall of 2021, as I am not sure of when the chapter was chartered here, but am aware that SJP as a national entity has existed since 1993.
SJP had always been extremely involved and well organized from when I arrived at the university. I first met the primary chair of the–who I will use the pseudonym of “Amina” to refer to moving forward for safety reasons–in the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design. Under her leadership, tireless work, grit and that of every one of her colleagues in the chapter (which has been composed of a supermajority of revolutionary women-leadership in the officer board and its dedicated members), SJP grew in its prominence since I have been here in its workshops, collaborations, etc.
However, there had always been an inherent feeling of hopelessness, considering the Israel-Palestine conflict has aggregately been a one-sided battering, with the Palestinians losing close to everything, except for their very identity at this point (and barely even that).
Although the identification with the movement was high, individual public promotion/self-identification with the movement was discouraged (e.g., officers and members wearing masks to cover portions of their face at protests, blurring of faces on social media posts at protests and events) to deter social/professional-doxxing on the Canary Mission or being subject to political persecution in the US or back in one’s native countries, as a significant portion of Palestinian supporters/allies are international students.
First SGA-SJP Resolution Urging UH to Divest from Stakeholders Invested in Israel
Nonetheless, SJP had engaged in consistent intermediate fundraising efforts, educational workshops, tablings, and recurring traditions (e.g. International Education Week) to promote and cement itself as a prominent and legitimate advocacy org on campus. SJP UH had even been instrumental in passing the first student government BDS resolution of its kind through the SGA senate in spring of 2022–making our SGA the first one in the entire state of Texas to pass legislation that urged a university to divest from weapons arms manufacturers that have direct involvement with the crimes being committed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). This immediately led to student governments across the state of Texas to pass resolutions similar in nature to our own, applicable to their own universities’ investments, over the coming months.
However, the bill had not been enforced or heeded by the relevant administrators in virtually any capacity, as there had not been long-term organizing apparatuses put in place to sustain that effort at the time.
Oct. 6, 2023 and Galvanizing America
All of this changed on a dime after the Oct. 6 attacks. Amina and every member of her officer board, leading up to that point had grown and developed tremendously in building the org’s prominence and legitimacy on campus, however it has absolutely skyrocketed since, due to their ability to seize the student body’s attention and turn their passion and anger into organized action.
Many protests had sprouted across the country all at once, including at UH, but had now had a spark that I have not witnessed in my lifetime, propelling organizing efforts to heights not conceived before.
Protests, Sit-Ins and Speaking Out
The first protests in which students started revealing their faces and stating who they were despite the tangible and intangible consequences that could amount from it sort of started with this protest when I led the chants. I did not even plan to lead this protest. The night before I had voiced support for the movement and encouraged all senators to get involved and not be afraid to say the truth, in preparation for the protest the following day. I came from my office to support the protest in the Student Center after getting out of a meeting. Then problematically, everyone got all quiet and didn’t want to chant, as they were afraid of being singled out and reported on by the Cougar. And the one thing I hate more than anything is when a bunch of rowdy students get together to do chants/and protest, with no one stepping up to the plate when the moment comes. Many of the officers I knew, and I started asking around, “Where are the organizers? What’s going on?” After I found them, I just motioned for them to give me their chants sheet and started chanting.
They then all got encouraged and started chanting and nearly all of them (as the crowd was composed of members from orgs [aside from SJP] such as the Pakistani Student Association (PSA), Muslim Students Association (MSA), United Mission Relief (UMR), Ahlul Bayt Student Organization (ABSO), Arab Students Association (ASA), Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), DeedsNotWords, Association of Latin/Hispanic Advocates and Allies (ALHAA), and numerous others.
Otherwise, I really enjoyed it in the end, and can say it led to a lot more attention on Starbucks and McDonalds as restaurants students should not be eating at, and has helped with continued efforts to decrease their revenue.
My ego would like to think that I noticed a trend following this protest that many student leaders started showing their faces more when protesting and being up-front about it, but we’ll leave that up for debate.
The Gala for Gaza
I wanted to put SGA alongside SJP on organizing efforts with the help of dedicated senators, and trying to find. Many senators wanted me to put out some statement or write a resolution “to show our solidarity”, however I was not in favor of tasteless performative activism.
I had personally known Amina and how much she had put on the line for her family and in supporting SJP through actual real community organizing and liberation through education and empowerment of the community around us, which especially was something that students had not seen in SGA for the last couple of lackluster administrations.
So, I directed very involved senators to engage in figuring out events, fundraisers, or real action of some kind that would actually support the cause alongside SJP organizers and these glorious efforts. After extensive months of planning, this culminated in the “Gala for Gaza”, in which multiple student organizations and foundations in the Houston community in partnership with SJP brought the community together with food, performances, a silent auction of art pieces that embodied the conflict and much more (raising over $55k for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund).
Targeted Boycotts and Referenda
The next bill that we passed during my administration took real action–rather than just simply issuing an opinion and loosley telling some far-off officials to take major actions. It was authored by myself, Cody Szell (a senator and the SGA Academic Affairs Chair at the time), and organizers from the SJP UH branch (who left their names off the bill to protect their identities) which enacted action for a referendum to take place in conjunction with the annual SGA elections to call for students to voice their support for the removal of Starbucks and McDonalds off campus (it passed with 1,918 students voting in favor with a vote of ‘yes’ and 774 ‘no’ on it [pg. 44]).
It also called for the creation of a ‘Palestine Liberation Action’ Task Force composed of members from SGA and SJP to work on fundraisers, policy initiatives, and extensive BDS efforts for the summer and fall semesters. My role on this committee will be in the form of holding the position of an SGA representative on the Food Service Advisory Committee (FSAC). I intend on utilizing this position to strategically negotiate contract renegotiations for replacing Starbucks and McDonalds, in addition to pushing for alternatives to replace other food items currently sold in the campus market stores and dining commons that are on the BDS list.
Governor Greg Abbott’s Executive Order to Suppress BDS Efforts & Intensive Strikes
The next actions will be the formation of the task force between officers, senators, and community leaders of SGA, SJP, and various other organizations.
There was an intensive SJP occupation [in April] of the Student Center South, with intense marches and choreography, in addition to informational sessions, and communal formulation alongside the efforts of many universities nationwide all at the same time. It is quite phenomenal how it is going right now.
