Connecting the local and the global

From Palestine solidarity to neighbourhood struggles, reflections on a collective broadcast at OT301

In moments of crisis and great injustice, as we are seeing today in Gaza, there is a major focus on mobilization and action within grassroots activist networks. This mobilization to act, often against many odds, is inspiring. It is important to also underline the ways that police and state forces act to repress and silence collective social action, as seen over the past year in Amsterdam, with the repression of student organizers from the University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit and Amsterdam University College. Overcoming the legal burdens and psychological impacts of such repression, both in the long and short term, is always a challenge for grassroots activism.

Despite these realities of repression, grassroots energy for collective action has reshaped public discussion and debate on many issues of our time. This includes Palestine. I think that it is important to underline this because mainstream narratives often leave out the role that grassroots social movements have played in shaping public policy and society. Although mainstream political policy in the western world has not shifted at all to respond to the demands of social movements, collective action is totally reshaping popular understandings of Palestine at a grassroots level. 

Given the urgency around taking action today for Palestine, it is difficult to find time and space, in the context of responding to an emergency, to reflect and think together about the paths and collective decisions we are taking. On Friday, Nov. 8th, at Ventilator Cinema (OT301), we held such a discussion between artists and activists in Amsterdam who are working and acting together to lift up Palestinian voices. This discussion was broadcasted on Radio AlHara in Bethlehem, Palestine. The panel included Amsterdam-based Palestinian artist Ahmad Mallah, a voice from Workers for Palestine NL, the contemporary artist Alina Lupu, Jarmo Berkhout of the Mokum Kraakt project and Adil, a print artist from NoShitPrint. The goal of this conversation was to create space for reflection on collective work and actions in the arts to support Palestine. 

I underline the event to highlight the importance of collective reflection within social movements. The late scholar Aziz Choudry helped to mobilize a lot of scholarship and collective publication projects that addressed the learning that takes place in social movements. Spaces, like the broadcast and discussion at OT301, focused on reflecting together about the Palestine solidarity movement in Amsterdam, are about the present moment but also about reflecting for the future. As mainstream media narratives very often erase the contributions of collective action toward shifting the popular debate on the issues of our time, it is urgent that we gather in the moment to find ways to articulate the role of activism in changing narratives. Concerning the Palestine solidarity movement, the grassroots, the popular narrative about the situation on the ground is changing very quickly within western contexts. The collective mobilizations, through Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses, but also through popular mobilization in general, street protests particularly, have worked impactfully to lift up Palestinian voice and shift narratives. 

Today there is more and more understanding about the reality in Palestine as being a fundamental struggle, in essence, against settler colonialism, against the imposition of a western European and American backed project, aimed at displacing and erasing the Indigenous people and cultures of Palestine. This shift in understanding has been driven directly by grassroots mobilizations and work across generations to shift mainstream narratives that have generally, in the western context, attempted to paint the Israeli state as a victim of regional aggression rather than a U.S.-backed western colonial outpost occupying Palestinian land. 

There is a shift in popular consciousness, due to the spaces of learning created in activism, in grassroots events like the one at OT301, and, critically, on the streets in the context of protests. Today people can see and understand more clearly the struggle of the Palestinian people as part of a historical continuum of popular revolts against colonial power, from the Indonesian people revolting against Dutch colonialism, to the people of the Indian subcontinent revolting against British rule, or the Algerian revolt against French occupation and colonization. The struggle in Palestine today is part of this trajectory of liberation struggles. The issue today is that the western liberal discourse, which signals toward a recognition of human rights, toward self-determination, stands at odds with western support for the Israeli state project. The gap between policy and discourse is being worked out on the streets. Popular opinion is so radically counter to the positions of most western politicians, even those who signal toward holding progressive values. 

Today it is paramount that the Palestine solidarity movement and generally activism movements, hold moments to reflect, to measure and see the massive impact that the popular mobilizations, protests and action have had in shifting grassroots opinions. Recognizing this work is key, as it illustrates our collective capacity to work, largely outside of institutions, to radically shift popular understandings. 

It illustrates the inherent connection between understanding that localized forms of injustice are deeply connected to a global system of neo-liberal capitalist colonialism that views the Earth as a set of potential commodifiable products and human beings as movable chess board pieces to be shifted around within a global game of power politics.

Drawing out the connections between the Palestine solidarity movement and other struggles, both local and global, is also important. These connections were made during that Radio AlHara broadcast discussion at OT301. Jarmo from the Mokum Kraakt project talked about the long history of solidarity with Palestine within the Amsterdam housing justice and squat action movements. This solidarity isn’t symbolic, it illustrates the inherent connection between understanding that localized forms of injustice are deeply connected to a global system of neo-liberal capitalist colonialism that views the Earth as a set of potential commodifiable products and human beings as movable chess board pieces to be shifted around within a global game of power politics. This type of detached thinking, which in the case of Palestine has resulted in genocidal colonial violence, comes from an essential disconnection from community and collective experiences of being. In this sense, the connections between local and global struggle are key because being meaningfully involved locally is an essential safeguard against being lost in debate and power plays in politics that become totally detached from lived realities. In this sense, the broadcast at OT301, streamed live on Radio AlHara, was about seeing both the local and the global, underlining interconnection and seeing all the learning that happens on the daily in social justice movements. 

Stefan Christoff is a community organizer, musician and media maker living in Montreal.
IG: spirochristoff // X: spirodon