Minneapolis, MN – 30 people gathered here for an April 19 forum announcing the first Coke Free Zone in Minneapolis. Last fall, the campaign to #BoycottCoke was launched by the U.S. Palestinian Communities Network (USPCN), targeting Coca-Cola for its operations in illegal settlements on Palestinian land, and its support for the Zionist regime.

Forum speakers addressed the Palestinian call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, because of its violations of international law and attacks on Palestinian rights. BDS is now a worldwide movement against Israeli apartheid and the governments, corporations and other institutions that support it.

The Minnesota Anti-War Committee took up the USPCN call to #BoycottCoke and won the support of all the peace and justice groups housed at 4200 Cedar Avenue, including the Women Against Military Madness, Midwest Jewish Voices for Peace, Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, the Welfare Rights Committee, Minnesota State Green Party, and Communities United Against Police Brutality. The Minnesota chapter of USPCN presented a plaque to building owner, Dave Bicking, to recognize that the building is the first in the state of Minnesota to be a part of the national campaign to boycott Coca-Cola.

Sophia Hanson-Day, a member of the Anti-War Committee, explained why people should refuse to drink and buy Coke products, “Why target a multi-billion dollar corporation with global reach instead of a smaller, more moveable target? We see targeting Coke as a way to start conversations about Israeli apartheid, the global BDS movement and supporting the Palestinian resistance just about anywhere. Beyond the specifics of Coke’s criminal profit-making from the oppression of the Palestinian people, Coke holds a pervasive presence in our schools, community centers, places of worship, grocery stores, etc. Coke products and its subsidiaries such as Minute Maid, Dasani, Honest Tea (to name a few) are quite literally everywhere. As a long-term campaign, boycotting Coke is a tool to shift the narrative supported by U.S. politicians that ignores Israeli atrocities and apartheid. This narrative demonizes Palestinians and holds up Israel as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. This Coke boycott will give us ammunition to combat these poisonous ideas through conversations with our families, neighbors, colleagues and fellow community members.”

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Minneapolis, MN – Some 30 people braved rain, sleet, hail and snow for a protest to build the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and to remember the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. The Minnesota Anti-War Committee (AWC) organized a bannering at the busy Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue intersection, complete with Palestinian flags, signs and a new banner that read, “Boycott Israeli apartheid, boycott Coke!”

As part as the ongoing international BDS movement, the campaign to boycott Coke was initiated last fall by the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN). Coke is produced in settlements built on stolen Palestinian land and it supports Israel as it commits crimes against the Palestinian people. Palestinians have called for an international boycott of Israel – from companies like Coke, to ending U.S. military aid to Israel.

Protesters passed out information about the campaign to #BoycottCoke to people waiting at nearby bus stops, but foot traffic was light, due to severe weather. Carrying umbrellas with slogans calling for a Free Palestine, and wearing rain ponchos with Palestinian flags, the protesters soon set out for the Deir Yassin memorial.

Deir Yassin is a Palestinian village west of Jerusalem and the site of a massacre of over 100 men, women and children by Zionist paramilitary gangs on April 9, 1948. The remainder of the village’s 750 people fled for their lives. After their expulsion Palestinians’ homes were destroyed, their cemetery bulldozed, and their land claimed by Zionist settlers.

While by no means the largest massacre committed by Zionists in their drive to create the state of Israel, Deir Yassin is marked as a turning point. The massacre catalyzed the ongoing Nakba, the dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians from their lands in 1948, and laid the groundwork for today’s apartheid Israel. While Deir Yassin was erased from the map, it remains a symbol of struggle in Palestinian memory.

Several police cars had rolled up at the start of protest and they followed as protesters marched from the busy intersection to the Midtown Greenway, a bike thoroughfare where the memorial is located. Chants of “Free, free Palestine!” and “Israel, Israel, you will learn, by the millions we’ll return!” rang out along the four-block stretch.

After flowers were placed at the memorial, the crowd moved indoors for several speakers to address the significance of Deir Yassin, and the ongoing Palestinian struggle.

Bassim Sabri, who owns the building where the memorial was installed, shared his own family’s experience, in the town of Qalqilya, not far from Deir Yassin. “In 1967, I have, along with my family, been invaded by the Israelis. I was eight years old, and I vividly remember the Israelis hit our town with bombing, and you name it. My dad was just in a nearby town. I escaped among some workers, because they wouldn’t let anybody out of town, to tell my father there is a war. Shortly after, the Israelis gathered the 25,000 people, or those who were remaining, into two areas, and I could never forget that. The two areas were one big field where it’s part of the soccer arena. They dug gigantic holes inside that field and we were all families standing around, surrounded by Israeli soldiers pointing guns at us. You can imagine what we think is going to happen.”

Sabri explained that his father, who understood Hebrew, heard a soldier say they were going to kill the townspeople. “My dad hugs us and starts crying. Everybody started crying.” He explained that a quick communication from the U.S. averted the massacre. “Today, you could have also been celebrating the death of some 20,000 Palestinians in Qalqilya.” He noted that today, Qalqilya is entirely surrounded by the apartheid wall, with only one entrance for 60,000 inhabitants.

The Minneapolis Deir Yassin memorial was commissioned by Nick Eoloff, who died in May 2014. Nick and his wife Mary Lou adopted Israeli prisoner of conscience, Mordechai Vanunu, and dedicated their lives to the struggles of the Guatemalan and Palestinian people. Their family members were present at Thursday’s protest and commemoration, including grandniece BethAnne Nelson Stolp, who shared memories of the Eoloffs.

“I grew up surrounded by a very pro-Israel message, but I have flashes of memory growing up, seeing Nick and Mary Lou at family events, and Uncle Nick who would have his Palestinian tie, or with the flag of Palestine on his lapel. What I always got from them was that so much of what has happened is not just the massacring and the expulsion, but the deliberate rewriting and denial of true history. History is being told in a way to influence the future to rewrite the past. To me, that’s why the Deir Yassin memorial is so important. It is a symbol of the Palestinian voice and the Palestinian story.”

AWC member Jennie Eisert spoke of the connection between Deir Yassin and today. “This day 67 years ago, would not have happened without the help of the U.S. The U.S. has had its hands in the apartheid state of Israel since its creation. Currently, military aid to the state of Israel comes in second only after Afghanistan. The state of Israel utilizes this aid heavily, the massacre on Gaza this summer is one of many countless examples that we have that really pushes this fact from guns to tanks to subs to fighter jets, etc. This aid that exchanges hands from the U.S. to the state of Israel is off the backs of workers here in the U.S., by our tax dollars. I’m sure you all have plenty of better ideas on where that money could be spent than Congress and the President – no matter who’s in the chair.”

Eisert, who is Colombian, shared one reason the AWC is eager to join the USPCN’s campaign against Coke, “Coca-Cola has a global reputation for being anti-union. In Colombia, they support paramilitary death squads who utilize tactics of intimidation, kidnapping, torture and assassinations of union leaders. We have been part of ‘Killer Coke’ boycotts in the past, protesting their bloody policies in Colombia. Today, we ask you to join us because of their oppression of Palestinians.”

The AWC will hold a BDS forum on April 19 at 2:00 p.m. at 4200 Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis. They plan to announce that 4200 Cedar, home to many progressive Twin Cities organizations, is the city’s first Coke Free Zone. The USPCN was founded in 2006 to revitalize grassroots organizing in the Palestinian community in the U.S., as part of the broader Palestinian nation in exile and the homeland. More information about the Coke Boycott can be found on their website at uspcn.org.

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Minneapolis, MN – Sabry Wazwaz reported back to over 100 people, Feb. 7, at Karmel West from his month long trip to Palestine this winter, where he did interviews for his upcoming documentary. Wazwaz is an outspoken leader in both the Palestinian American community and the Anti-War Committee. He is an advocate for a free Palestine and against U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid. Wazwaz explained his motivation for his trip as a desire to “wake people up about what’s really going on” in Palestine and to counter the lies of U.S. mainstream media.

Sabry Wazwaz’s presentation was a passionate explanation of the role of Israeli apartheid in the daily lives of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. He detailed the role of the 25-foot high apartheid wall which is “480 miles long – the distance between Minneapolis and Gary, Indiana even though ‘Israel’ is smaller than New Jersey. It zigzags throughout Palestinian land on the West Bank.” He continued to explain that the wall, with its numerous military checkpoints, is used not only to steal land but to “treat Palestinians like they’re animals and to try to provoke fights with Palestinians so they can hit them. Between Ramallah and Bethlehem there is a checkpoint that takes two to four hours to get through even though the distance is only 10 miles! They make it as hard as possible to get through.”

Wazwaz continued “How would you feel if everyone going from Brooklyn Park had to go on a separate road to Minneapolis every day? They use the wall and this discriminatory treatment to try to push Palestinians to leave. New Jewish Israeli immigrants have more rights than Palestinians whose families have lived there for generations. Can you imagine how you would feel if a Canadian moved to Minnesota and had more rights than you did in your own country?”

Wazwaz highlighted interviews and conversations he had with Palestinian families about experiencing settler violence and with Israeli soldiers about their cooperation with settlers in committing these acts of violence. “Elementary girls are attacked by settlers with stones every day on their way to school while the soldiers stand by and don’t protect Palestinian children. But yet they shoot live ammunition at Palestinian children for throwing rocks! It’s hypocrisy!”

Wazwaz has started the process of putting his footage together for a documentary which he wants to use to educate Americans about the reality of life under occupation, “Many years ago the Anti-War Committee had a protest on University Avenue to protest Senator Coleman and we shut down the whole street. One truck driver went ballistic because we were in his way. Americans cannot handle five minutes of a street occupation. Imagine 66 years of occupation. All we want is justice!”

Maher Alrai, a representative from the newly formed Twin Cities chapter of U.S. Palestinian Communities Network spoke about the organization’s national #BoycottCoke campaign, noting Coca Cola’s bottling plants are on stolen land in the West Bank.

The event was organized by the Minnesota Anti-War Committee and was endorsed by Minnesota Break the Bonds, Students for a Democratic Society at UMN, Mayday Bookstore, Middle East Peace Now and Women Against Military Madness.

The next event the Anti-War Committee is organizing is a benefit for Rasmea Odeh’s legal defense called Rock for Rasmea on Feb. 21, from 6:30 p.m. to midnight at Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Avenue S in Minneapolis.

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