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OVER 130 PEACEFUL PROTESTORS ARRESTED AT UMASS AMHERST

May 10, 2024 - By UMass Amherst Chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine

Drawing by Grant Hoskins, published with permission from the artist

Students Called for Divestment from Weapons Manufacturers as State Police Entered Campus

AMHERST, MASS.—Over 130 students, faculty, and community members were arrested by state police on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus on Tuesday evening and into the early hours of Wednesday morning at the behest of UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes. Several students were tackled and injured during the course of the arrests. 

Students reestablished an encampment on the university’s South Lawn on...

What's in a Name

May 7, 2024 - By Jim Hicks

“Palestinians are one of the final reminders that a future without colonialism is possible.”
  –  Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud, “A World without Palestinians”

In the time since we posted the call for our special issue, “The View from Gaza,” which will be guest-edited by Michel Moushabeck, we’ve received a number of queries, and criticism as well as support. Rather than reply individually, I thought it might be helpful to outline publicly my own reasons for supporting this project. Though I have...

The Madness of Militarism

December 25, 2023 - By Norman Solomon

Editor’s note: On November 15, 2023, Norman Solomon delivered the Second Annual Ellsberg Lecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a lecture series hosted by University’s Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy. The text below is based on a transcript of his remarks, excerpted and edited for publication. In 2019, Ellsberg made UMass the home for his papers; with the help of an anonymous donor, this treasure trove of some 500 boxes of material became part of the...

PETP, or, Unintended Consequences

November 17, 2023 - By Jim Hicks

(Illustration by Rose M. Spielman; Psychology: OpenStax, p. 519, Fig 14.22

“There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.”

Since the October War on Gaza began, I’m told, we’ve been killing a thousand children a week.

For an instant, when Joe Biden said, don’t repeat our mistakes, there was a flash, a glimmer, a mirage maybe, but there was something. After all, sometimes we do learn, sometimes we know the history, sometimes we’re...

Open Statement in Solidarity with Palestine

November 10, 2023 - By Woman Life Freedom

Jin, Jiyan, Azadî as in Free Palestine

We, the undersigned, who have been pleading for Jin Jiyan Azadî in the last year, demand an end to genocide, call for immediate ceasefire, and express our solidarity with the Palestinian people and their liberation struggle.

As we witness genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli state’s occupying forces against Palestinians, overwhelmingly the people of Gaza, as well as the residents of the West Bank, we are filled with anger, pain and devastation. We are deeply troubled by the racist, dehumanising language and hate speech casually broadcasted by the Western media, which has complicitly facilitated the ongoing violence. Sitting in an unspeakable grief for the countless lives and voices lost during this tragic...