[act-ma] Thurs 5/17: Commemorating the Nakba: An Evening of Remembrance, Poetry, and Musical Performance

[Nesreen]

Commemorating the 64th Anniversary of the Nakba in Palestine, 
please join us for an evening of remembrance, poetry, and musical performance.

Thursday May 17th, 2012
7:00 PM
Lewis Room
Cambridge Public Library, Central Square
45 Pearl St, Cambridge
accessible by bus and red line, Central Sq stop, wheelchair accessible
This event is free. 

*****

Here We Shall Stay (excerpt)

"...Here we shall stay 
Like a wall upon your breast 
Washing dishes in idle, buzzing bars 
Pouring drinks for our overlords 
Scrubbing floors in blackened kitchens 
To snatch a crumb of bread for our children 
From between your blue fangs. 

Here we shall stay 
A hard wall on your breast. 

We hunger 
Have no clothes 
We defy 
Sing our songs 
Sweep the sick streets with our angry dances 
Saturate the prisons with dignity and pride 
Keep on making children 
One revolutionary generation 
After another 
As though we were twenty impossibilities 
In Lydda, Ramla, and Galilee..."

by Tawfiq Zayyad

*****

HISTORY

This May marks the 64th anniversary of the Nakba (Arabic for "catastrophe") in Palestine in 1948 when over 935,000 Palestinians (85% of the indigenous population of Palestine at that time) were forced off their land, 
in some cases at gunpoint, in other cases through massacres or threats of massacres like the massacre at Deir Yassin. As a result, 530 of an estimated 550 total villages were completely destroyed or depopulated. "Israel" was founded on the racist ideology of zionism. It has followed the expansionist and genocidal logic of white supremacy and colonialism for over sixty years. Today, the genocide in Palestine continues: from the planned demolition of Palestinian homes in occupied Al Quds (Jerusalem) to the attacks by zionist settlers on Palestinian farmers to the continued siege of the people of Gaza-- deprived of food, water, electricity, and medicine-- to the mass detention of over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners. 


*This event is sponsored by the P3 Committee: Palestine, Poetry, and Politics and is free and open to the public.
Flyers attached. 
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