Minneapolis, MN – On December 6, around 30 people gathered at the Lucy Parsons Center for a political prisoners panel and letter writing workshop organized by the Minnesota chapter of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN). The panel took place amidst an increasingly repressive political climate in the U.S.

The Trump administration has maximized its weaponization of xenophobic and racist sentiments to justify unleashing hordes of militarized ICE agents and National Guard troops across several U.S. cities — many of which have long been strongholds for grassroots activism.

Meanwhile, arbitrary arrests of Palestinians by Israeli forces are rampant. Despite the latest Palestinian prisoner release, over 9300 Palestinians remain in Israeli prisons and detention centers. Over 3300 of those prisoners are being held indefinitely under administrative detention, without charges or trials.

The panelists of the event — members of the national chapter of the USPCN, the Minnesota Anti-War Committee and the Wrongfully Incarcerated and Over-sentenced Families Council MN (WIAOFC-MN) — emphasized the significance of political prisoners in our movements. Panelists shed light on why imprisonment is such a heavily employed tactic by oppressive forces and the importance of fighting back against it.

Rania Salem, a leading organizer in USPCN national’s political prisoners committee, opened the panel. Salem spoke to the grotesque conditions Palestinian prisoners endure in Israeli prisons and how those conditions relate to the unrealized effort by the Israeli government to shatter the spirit of Palestinian resistance. Salem highlighted a handful of Palestinian political prisoners, including Khalida Jarrar.

Jarrar, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was first arrested in 1989 after her participation in an International Women’s Day demonstration. Jarrar’s fifth and most recent arrest took place in December 2023. While imprisoned, Jarrar was subjected to significant abuse, forced to spend several months in harsh solitary confinement and deprived of basic necessities including hygiene products, food and water.

“The systematic torture and abuse inflicted on Khalida Jarrar, as well as all Palestinian political prisoners, are a form of this slow death that appears to be designed to break Palestinians both physically and psychologically,” said Salem.

Jarrar was released in January of this year as a part of the ceasefire prisoner release and has not shied away from speaking about the inhumane conditions faced in Israeli detention.

“Jarrar is an example of the many Palestinians who have been imprisoned and tortured as a way to silence and deter Palestinians from speaking out against the occupation,” continued Salem. “Israel is targeting our national, political and social leaders intentionally. They do this to attempt to weaken Palestinian civil society as a whole and to weaken our movement for liberation, which, to be quite honest, is never going to work. That’s never going to happen.”

Salem concluded, “To fight for the liberation of Palestine, we must also defend and fight for the liberation of all our prisoners everywhere. The phrases like ‘to break the chains’ and ‘free them all’ — they’re not just statements to us. They are the very thing that drives us to keep fighting for liberation as a whole.”

Liz Bolsoni, an organizer with the MN Anti-War Committee, continued this thread, and spoke to imprisonment as a tactic abused by the U.S. to stifle political dissent beyond Palestine.

Bolsoni began by covering the Anti-War Committee’s work around Venezuela and Alex Saab: “U.S. strikes in the Caribbean since September have killed nearly 100 people, and before that, U.S. imposed sanctions had killed tens of thousands. Alex Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat and a former political prisoner, challenged these sanctions and did so by facilitating necessary humanitarian needs like medicine, food and fuel to his country.”

In 2021, Saab, a Columbian-born Venezuelan, faced up to 20 years in U.S. prison for circumventing the U.S.’s deadly sanctions on Venezuela. Saab was subjected to beatings and torture while in detention. After sustained pressure campaigns, Saab was released in December 2023.

Bolsoni went on to talk about how similar attacks are frequently deployed within the U.S. as well, highlighting the cases of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, two student organizers who were abducted and detained by ICE agents earlier this year for protesting their universities’ roles in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

The panel concluded with Alissa Washington, the founder of the Wrongfully Incarcerated and Over-sentenced Families Council MN, whose work focuses on advocating for individuals imprisoned in Minnesota. Washington spoke about the process of dehumanization and demoralization that’s shared between Palestinian and American prisoners alike and the inherent politicization of prisoners in the United States.

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