Minneapolis, MN – On Thursday, February 15, the University of Minnesota chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, in collaboration with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, held a panel in Nicholson Hall on the UMN campus discussing Marxist-Leninist perspectives on Palestinian liberation. Thirty people, both students and community members, were in attendance.

The panel speakers included Mira Altobell-Resendez from SDS, Jae Yates from the Twin Cities Coalition 4 Justice 4 Jamar, Steff Yorek from the Climate Justice Committee, and Andrew Josefchak from the Minnesota Anti-War Committee. All four are also members of FRSO and specifically analyzed the Israeli occupation of Palestine with a Marxist-Leninist lens.

The panelists strongly emphasized the Palestinian people’s status as an oppressed nation and their fight as a national liberation struggle. They made clear FRSO’s absolute solidarity with the cause of Palestinian liberation and the importance of participating in that struggle here in the United States, pointing out that the cause of freedom for Palestine is the cause of the international working class.

Altobell-Resendez, speaking as a member of SDS on the role of student organizing in the fight for Palestine stated, “For student organizers, this means looking into our universities’ investments and programming that supports Israel in any way – be it through monetary funding, study abroad programs, partnerships with Israeli universities, or the presence of weapons manufacturers and military branches that recruit from campus – and saying that we will not stand for ethnic cleansing to be carried out using our tuition money. We must refuse to let our education be turned into an instrument of violent settler colonialism.”

SDS is currently part of a coalition with other student groups on campus campaigning to pressure the University of Minnesota into divesting from Israel.

The panelists all made clear that the people of the world stand with Palestine in their struggle against occupation and genocide – from the Gaza Strip to Minneapolis.

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