Threads of Resistance: From Puerto Rico to Palestine

Join us for a program about The Living Record, an archival project organized by Writers Against the War on Gaza honoring martyred journalists in Gaza.

This event is being held in conversation with our current exhibition, ¡AN UNBREAKABLE HUMAN THREAD! Movements & People for a Sovereign Borikén. The main title of this exhibition comes from revered Marxist independentista Doña Consuelo Lee Corretjer, who used the expression to describe the resistance’s struggle for a Puerto Rico libre. It is this thread which sutures and bonds our liberatory anti-imperial struggles from Puerto Rico to Palestine.

The perpetual displacement of the Puerto Rican people, enforced by resource austerity measures, echoes 1947’s Operation Bootstrap, whose campaigns of forced migration, coerced sterilization, and imposed educational curriculum formalized the US’s imperial ambitions on the archipelago. In 1948, Zionist settlers escalated another campaign of forced migration and ethnic cleansing in Palestine during the Nakba that resulted in the violent dispossession of almost one million Palestinians from their land. As the US and Israeli-led genocide accelerates this imperial violence against the Palestinian people, it is imperative to examine the use of archiving as a tool of resistance to colonial hegemony.

To honor and bear witness to these parallel struggles, we will be screening an oral history documentary of Palestinian communities in Puerto Rico, put together by 9 Millones, that will be followed by a discussion on The Living Record from members of Writers Against the War on Gaza.