Last week, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) issued an international call for the World Social Forum Free Palestine, scheduled to take place in November 2012 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In an email message to solidarity groups publicizing the call, the BNC wrote:
This is a unique opportunity, challenge and responsibility for all of us. This potentially game changing forum will bring together the entirety of the international solidarity movement and allow us to show our strength, celebrate our successes and plan for more. We're very excited about the opportunities it presents for the solidarity movement in general and for the BDS movement in particular.
The BNC's call can be read in full below. Please share widely!!!
Call for the World Social Forum Free Palestine, Nov. 2012 in Brazil
Posted on January 19, 2012 by StopTheWall Campaign
Occupied Palestine is part of every free heartbeat in this world and her cause continues to inspire solidarity across the globe. The World Social Forum Free Palestine is an expression of the human instinct to unite for justice and freedom and an echo of the World Social Forum’s opposition to neo-liberal hegemony, colonialism, and racism through struggles for social, political and economic alternatives to promote justice, equality, and the sovereignty of peoples.
The WSF Free Palestine will be a global encounter of broad-based popular and civil society mobilizations from around the world. It aims to:
1. Show the strength of solidarity with the calls of the Palestinian people and the diversity of initiatives and actions aimed at promoting justice and peace in the region.
2. Create effective actions to ensure Palestinian self-determination, the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the fulfillment of human rights and international law, by:
a) Ending Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
b) Ensuring the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
c) Implementing, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
3. Be a space for discussion, exchange of ideas, strategizing, and planning in order to improve the structure of solidarity.
Exactly sixty-five years after Brazil presided over the UN General Assembly session that agreed upon the partition of Palestine, Brazil will host a different type of global forum: an historic opportunity for people from all over the world to stand up where governments have failed. The world’s people will come together to discuss new visions and effective actions to contribute to justice and peace in the region.
We call on all organizations, movements, networks, and unions across the globe to join the WSF Free Palestine in November 2012 in Porto Alegre. We ask you to join the International Committee for the WSF Free Palestine, we will establish as soon as possible. Participation in this forum will structurally strengthen solidarity with Palestine, promote action to implement Palestinian’s legitimate rights, and hold Israel and its allies accountable to international law.
Together we can raise global solidarity with Palestine to a new level.
Palestinian Preparatory Committee for the WSF Free Palestine 2012
Secretariat members:
· PNGO – Palestinian NGO Network
· Stop the Wall – Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign,
· OPGAI – Occupied Palestinian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative
· Alternatives represented by:
Alternative Information Center,
Teacher Creativity Center
· Ittijah
· General Union of Palestinian women
Coordination office:
PNGO – Palestinian NGO Network
Tel: +970 2 2975320/1
Fax: +970 2 2950704
E mail: samahd@pngo.net
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