Students for Justice in Palestine prepare for convergence in D.C.

IU's Students for Justice in Palestine are preparing a campaign to organize students and Bloomington residents to participate in an Oct. 25 mass convergence in Washington, D.C. The rally will call for a peaceful end to U.S. foreign occupation around the world.\nBob Kendall, Bloomington resident and SJP actions coordinator, said the convergence is aimed at telling the Bush administration to bring home U.S. troops from Iraq and an end to Iraqi occupation and other U.S.-led or U.S.-funded military operations abroad. \n"I hope the convergence garners enough attention that people begin to look more closely to what's going on over there," Kendall said. "We hope this international day of unrest dispels the media myth that the peace and anti-war movements are dead."\nSJP has been preparing for the convergence through fundraising efforts and by coordinating non-violence training workshops.\nKendall, who has three years experience with non-violence training, said the training sessions at SJP meetings will include mock police encounters and cover legal training and safety issues. \n"The police are very well trained to get people to submit to their orders, and we want to make sure people are prepared to peacefully handle those pressures without striking back at officers," Kendall said. \nSJP will be coordinating local organization efforts with United for Peace and Justice as well as International Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, who initiated and is co-sponsoring the Oct. 25 rally. According to its Web site, the International ANSWER coalition is an umbrella group formed in response to the drive for war after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.\nSarah Friedman, national outreach coordinator for the ANSWER coalition in Washington D.C, said she has heard from organizations, like IU's SJP, across the country interested in the convergence and is expecting hundreds of thousands to attend. \n"This specific demonstration is to call for an end to Iraqi occupation," Friedman said. "But we are against all U.S. occupations around the world. The people of Iraq have the right to determine their own destiny." \nFriedman said she has heard from many college and high school student organizations across the nation and stressed U.S. occupation in Iraq should be a concern for all young adults. \nShe said ANSWER has an organization devoted to youth activism called Answer Youth & Student National Coalition. \n"We have student organizers all over the country not only for this demonstration but for anti-war movement in general," Friedman said. "The war and the occupation is all costing money, and that money is being pulled out of all of our social service programs, from health care for seniors to grants that are available to college students, which affects everyone -- including young people." \nShe said she hopes the demonstration will project an international message that Americans are actively opposing foreign occupation. \n"We hope it will show people around the world that we do have an opinion and that we're not just sitting around idly watching our president destroy the country of Iraq," she said. \nAccording to ANSWER's Web site, more than 2,000 organizations and individuals have endorsed the Oct. 25 march, including Veterans for Peace, the National Lawyers Guild and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.\nMany high-profile activists have endorsed the march in recent weeks as well, including former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit's Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Grumbleton. \nSenior Deema Dabis, SJP media coordinator, said SJP plans to act as a local contact for area residents interested in attending the convergence and will be organizing ride-shares to the event.\n"We're hoping to help people who want to go to Washington but don't have the means of getting there," Dabis said. "It might seem far-fetched for people in IU to travel so far for this, but many people will be traveling as far as San Francisco to attend."\nDabis also said that, while most of SJP will be joining other Palestinian liberation groups at the demonstration, the ride-share to D.C. and non-violence training workshops are open to everyone.\n"We realize that with so many reasons to act against this war, there will be people going for many different reasons," she said. "We plan to do our best to get people here connected to the group that best represents the issues most relevant to them." \nDabis said SJP was founded about three years ago as a spin-off of The Committee for Peace in the Middle East. \nKendall said SJP is a campus organization whose aim is to help bring about a solution to the 37-year-old occupation in the Palestinian territories by Israeli defense forces, self-determination and economic independence from America for Israel and lasting peace and security for all citizens of the Middle East.\nDabis said SJP plans to contact other like-minded campus groups to join in the Oct. 25 convergence in Washington. \nSJP will meet tonight in the Indiana Memorial Union's Sassafras Room at 7 p.m. Anyone interested in the Oct. 25 convergence in Washington is invited to attend. \nStudents, citizens and organizations interested in the convergence can find more information at www.internationalanswer.org or by contacting sjp@indiana.edu. Donations to help cover travel and organizational expenses can also be made out to Students for Justice in Palestine, P.O. Box 3411, Bloomington, IN, 47401.\n-- Contact staff writer Andrea Minarcek at aminarce@indiana.edu.