Students for Justice in Palestine set out to advocate for full and equal Palestinian rights, raise awareness of and protest Israeli occupation, valorize Palestinian art and literature, and promote justice and peace. This year, the organization’s University of Pittsburgh chapter (SJP at Pitt), has seen more forward movement than they have in a decade. Though SJP at Pitt was founded about 15 years ago, “the transformation from the early 2000s as opposed to now is like night and day,” its membership says.
Since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli military operations in Gaza have reportedly killed over 44,000 people, displaced millions of Palestinians, bombarded hospitals, universities, and civilian property, and caused starvation, to the dismay of many Pittsburghers.
“I think I, and I’m sure everybody, has been fully shifted and radicalized by what we’ve been seeing,” says one student. “I think watching what’s been happening has probably impacted everybody’s lives in some way.”
The shift has reignited SJP’s advocacy, and taken it many directions, ranging from what the organization calls unlearning — holding public rallies, educational events, and film screenings that center Palestinian perspectives — to walkouts and banner drops. The group also called for Pitt’s financial divestment (or divestiture) from all Israel-related businesses and funds, a decades-old tactic once used to protest apartheid South Africa.
“We try to challenge narratives,” SJP tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “There’s been no reason for the average American to dig deeper … We try to educate people [about] what Palestinians are asking us to do, especially now that they are facing genocide.”
SJP members (who spoke on the condition of anonymity) say their activism comes at a high personal cost. In June, pro-Palestine groups including SJP established a Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the Cathedral of Learning, what SJP calls “the very forefront” of its actions this year, “because it was a very visible public display of support for divestiture, for advocating for Palestinian human rights.”
The encampment resulted in a tense standoff with police, and in criminal charges, including nine felonies, against 20 people, according to SJP. For the students, it also raised broader questions about the limits of free speech and activism, particularly during Pitt’s Year of Discourse and Dialogue.
“It’s been very clear to us that there’s been a manifest sharpening of contradictions,” SJP says.
The group views itself in the lineage of other student activist movements, including anti-Vietnam War protests, and after activists at Pitt, where, in 1969, students from the Black Action Society led a pivotal sit-in at the university computer center. (The protest — which took place on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and nine months after his assassination — led to the creation of the university’s Department of Africana Studies, recruitment of more Black faculty and students, and was praised by Pitt administration on its 50th anniversary.)
“The U.S. does have a history of student movements engendering very large-scale change,” an SJP member says.
Members also see the pro-Palestine movement as intersectional, supported by labor unions, LGBTQ and transgender rights activists, and young college students, among others.
“Because half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 18, I think students specifically see ourselves in the people of Palestine,” says one SJP member. “And I wouldn’t even say it’s isolated to youth or to students … I think a lot of people see themselves in Palestinians, a lot of people who don’t have the greatest hope in our institutions, and I think that’s what keeps people in this movement going.”
“I think we have so much that we can learn from Palestinians in the way that we conduct ourselves, the way that we carry ourselves, the way that we continue through obstacle after obstacle, in our advocacy for them, in making sure that the word Palestine, the word Palestinian, is not erased from history,” SJP says.
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2024 and Pittsburgh’s People of the Year (2024).
