Working for a World Without Walls
One of my many commitments as Lakeshore’s Pastor of Public Witness is to serve as the Convener of the Bay Area World Without Walls Coalition. Heeding the call from Palestinian and Mexican freedom fighters to unite struggles that challenge all visible and invisible walls that enshrine injustice, we are part of a network of hundreds of communities across the globe organizing, demanding and creating a world without walls of “expulsion, exclusion, oppression, discrimination and exploitation.” You can read the full call for a world without walls here.
While we usually hold a major event around November 9, commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, this moment of national uprising in the U.S. and intensified annexation in Palestine compels us to respond. I hope you will join us August 28 at 10 a.m. Pacific for an international conversation between Angela Davis and Jamal Juma’, moderated by Kristian Davis Bailey, about the intersections of abolition and liberation in this moment.
Join us for an international discussion of the connections between Black Lives Matter calls to defund the police and abolish the prison industrial complex, and Palestinian calls to tear down all apartheid walls and free Palestine.
Register at bit.ly/AbLib.
Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church and the Pacific Coast Baptist Association are proud sponsors of this event.
Information about our speakers
Our speakers bring years of on-the-ground experience and strategic thinking to the conversation. Angela Davis has been an activist and liberatory scholar since the 1960s. Her 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete? laid the strategic groundwork for the current abolition movement, as did the first Critical Resistance Conference, which she co-organized in 1998.
She will be joined, from Palestine, by Jamal Juma’, a leading grassroots organizer since Palestine’s First Intifada in 1987. A founding member of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, Palestine National BDS Committee, Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange, and Palestinian Environmental NGO Network, Juma’ is coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and Stop the Wall.
Kristian Davis Bailey, who will be moderating their conversation, is a co-founder of Black for Palestine and a co-author of the 2015 Black Solidarity with Palestine Statement signed by more than 1,000 Black activists. He was a member of Black Youth Project 100 and Students for Justice in Palestine. Kristian currently works at Palestine Legal and is a member of LeftRoots.
There has never been a more critical time for this thought-provoking and inspiring conversation. Please join us as we sharpen our understanding of these critical issues and build our capacity for effective resistance!
In addition to joining this powerful webinar, I also encourage you to check out the world without walls online exhibit Walls in Times of Pandemic which features our work to release ICE detainees over the past few months.