Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance

movement specific to our region. The Southern Arizona BDS Network began with two successful 2014 fall/winter efforts in Tucson, Arizona. The kick-off fundraiser, “Shake Off The Occupation: From the Borderlands to Palestine” successfully raised money for MECA (Middle East Children’s Alliance) and brought our communities together in a strong showing of Palestinian solidarity from the borderlands. At our three community teach-ins: “Palestine 101”, “How Zionism and the State of Israel Affect Our Social Movements”, and Tohono O’odham, Migrant Justice and Palestine Solidarity: Movements Against Militarization,” we deepened our knowledge about interrelated struggles against the growing military occupation of the US/Mexico border region, and the Israeli colonization of Palestine. Following these public events, the Southern Arizona BDS Network is now working to further educate and create a movement and build a regional campaign that can expose and oppose the US/Israeli partnership in the new wave of militarization of the Southern AZ/border region and Tohono O'odham lands. Our efforts include: building solidarity, strengthening our partnerships, building our coalition, and building our base. We will continue to build our overlapping work and connections with social movements here in AZ: indigenous sovereignty and struggle, migrant justice movements, and other anti-racist, anti-militarization struggles--including the local and national Black Lives Matter movement, that is opposing Israeli/US collaboration in the militarization of the police. In all this, we practice and promote a vision of interconnected struggles for collective liberation.