Georgia State students commemorate one year of genocide in Palestine
Atlanta, Ga – On October 9, students, faculty and community members gathered on the green space at Georgia State University (GSU) for a vigil for Palestine. Over 80 people joined in honoring the lives taken by the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza, and to call out GSU’s active involvement in the genocide.
The event began with an Islamic prayer practiced in times of calamity and in support of the oppressed. Tears ran down dozens of faces listening to the prayer pleading “O Allah, grant victory to the people of Palestine.” A few GSU cops popped up in full gear to watch students mourn.
“We see numbers like 42,000 and 189,000 and it’s important to emphasize that these are individuals,” said Kaya Toney, a member of Young Democratic Socialists of America in a speech. “They are people with dreams and aspirations, lives that have been cut too short by our government, a government currently seeking to be re-elected into office.”
Another speaker, Noor Al Baghdadi with Students for Justice in Palestine at GSU, pointed out the university’s active role in the oppression of Palestinians abroad and Black people in America, stating, “The Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program is hosted by GSU at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. They send cops to learn racist profiling and repression tactics from the zionist entity. Not only does this legitimize the Zionist entity, the police come back here to use this training on Black and brown communities.”
GSU has been home to the racist GILEE program since 1998. Many police chiefs across the U.S. have gone to Israel to learn from the apartheid-enforcing police. Atlanta Police Department’s previous police chief, Rodney Bryant, is quoted on the front page of the GILEE website saying he was “impressed by the level of community policing efforts employed by the Israeli police.” Since Bryant’s visit, APD has increased its camera surveillance access to include thousands of private security cameras, on top of the APD cameras on every street. This makes Atlanta the most surveilled city in the U.S., with one police camera for every 20 people.
Bisan Amin, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, concluded the vigil on a hopeful note, stating, “The zionist entity is in the throes of death. It is doing what an empire does when it is on its final legs. It is lashing out in the most violent ways it possibly can because it knows that there is no hope. The spirit of resistance lives on. It is in all of us that are here.”
After the speeches, attendees stamped their hands in the colors of the Palestinian flag on a large canvas. People gathered to talk in groups as more people kept trickling in. Organizers of the event urged folks to join an organization and keep the fight going.