Reedies Walk Out and March for Palestine

Reed students, staff, and faculty answered Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)’s call for a walkout on Friday, January 26, at 1:00pm. The walkout was called to converge with a downtown Portland rally co-organized by numerous pro-Palestinian groups in support of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) lawsuit against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for failing to prevent and aiding and abetting genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The CCR lawsuit, Defense for Children International–Palestine, et al. v. Joseph Biden, et al., is being heard in federal court in the Northern District of California and says that the Biden administration has failed to uphold its responsibilities under the 1948 Genocide Convention, an article of international law intended to prevent genocide to which the United States is a party, and the 1987 Genocide Convention Implementation Act, a US federal law meant to facilitate compliance with the Genocide Convention.

After walking out, approximately a hundred Reedies converged on Eliot Circle. SJP organizer Sophia (who wished for their last name to be excluded, along with two additional speakers quoted later in the article), laid out the context of the walkout and reiterated the demand for a ceasefire, saying, “Unfortunately we must continue to gather here in protest, like we did last semester, calling for a ceasefire, as Palestinians are still undergoing a genocide by the Israeli government.” They added, “This is a genocide that is being funded by our tax dollars.” The United States provides 3.6 billion dollars in military aid to Israel every year, and since October 7, 2023, has approved 14.5 billion dollars in additional aid. Almost all yearly US military aid to Israel is used for purchases from American military contractors. 

While addressing the crowd of protesters, Sophia read two Instagram posts by Gaza-based Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, from January 24 and January 23, respectively. On January 24, Owda posted an image of herself from “once upon a time, before the genocide... on a boat ride on my beautiful city,” describing Gaza as “the place that I will choose forever” with “my beloved people that I will choose to talk about forever.” Sophia juxtaposed the first post with another on January 23, in which Owda posted, “This might be our last call, we are dying! Gaza is completely collapsing!” Owda’s post describes the Israeli bombardment of three hospitals in Khan Younis, and says “People killed in the bombing were buried on [sic] front of our eyes in the hospital yard due to tanks blockading the streets, the wounded were on the ground without treatment and there was [sic] not enough medical staff! Massacres are still being committed.” The post concludes, “Take to the streets, protest, strike.. make pressure on the decision–makers by striking the economic movement! Call for a ceasefire!” Previously, Owda had also called for a weeklong global strike from January 21-28.

Sophia yielded the microphone to fellow organizer Indigo, who introduced the CCR suit against President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin. Indigo said the CCR case rests on the fact that “despite fully knowing Israel’s genocidal intentions, the United States sold Israel weapons, and they are still selling them.” Genocidal intent is a critical part of the 1948 Genocide Convention’s definition of the crime of genocide, which states that any of the five potentially genocidal acts listed in the Convention must be “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” to qualify as genocidal. Palestinian advocates, genocide scholars, and the South African government have argued that dehumanizing statements made by senior Israeli officials about Palestinians in Gaza reflect genocidal intent, which the Israeli and American governments deny. Indigo also emphasized that because of the “structural violence” of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which began in 2007, “even after there is some sort of ceasefire, the genocide will not stop.” Enforcing “conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction” of a group is one of the genocidal acts defined in Article II of the Genocide Convention.

Indigo connected the Palestinian struggle to US domestic policy, citing the deaths of six Portlanders during the recent snowstorms as “a choice the city made, to not have housing for these people to go to” after police sweeps and shelter closures. “A city with ten million tax dollars to spend on an Israeli private security company,” he said, “makes a choice when it leaves people to die in the cold.” Indigo then told the story of his father’s death due to US border policy. His father, who grew up in Juarez, Chihuahua, on the US-Mexico border, was blacklisted from entering the United States for illegally visiting El Paso, Texas, as a minor. Later, he became sick and needed medical treatment that was only available in the United States, but he was prevented from entering the country and eventually died. Indigo connected his father’s death to a regime of border enforcement common to the United States and Israel that “concentrate[s] power and divide[s] resources” at the expense of human life, and ended with an incantation against borders and walls.

Speaking next, another organizer, Ray, criticized the hypocrisy of the Biden administration on Palestinian human rights, recalling that during the campaign for the 2020 presidential election Biden promised to “end the forever wars” and “elevate diplomacy.” Notably, then-Senator Biden was also the original Senate sponsor of the 1987 Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which he now stands accused of violating. Ray cited the Biden administration’s approval of emergency weapons sales and diplomatic cover for Israel at the UN as evidence of Biden’s lack of sincere commitment to peace and justice. Drawing a parallel between Biden and Reed College President Audrey Bilger, Ray highlighted that Bilger has made “multiple weak-worded statements about the ongoing genocide” of Palestinians, but has still yet to explicitly condemn Israel’s actions. They also pointed out that Bilger has previously been willing to speak about her principles on politically contentious subjects, as seen in her condemnation of the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, but “in the face of a genocide, she and many other remains silent.” According to Ray, the failures of the Biden and Bilger administrations make it Reedies’ responsibility to fight for justice and resist complacency. 

Walkout participants agreed, telling the Quest they thought it was important to continue expressing solidarity with Palestine. Jolie Jaffe ‘26 said, “I think it’s really important to be vocal, especially with how unresponsive the Reed administration has been, [and] to continue to fight for Palestinian liberation. Especially as a Jew, those values are really important to me.” Another protester, who wished to remain anonymous, said “I think it’s important to keep showing up for Palestine, especially considering that since October 7, 25,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.” Contextualizing the Eliot Circle and Pioneer Square actions, they added, “We may think it’s something that’s happening far away from us… but we live in the United States and the United States gives millions of dollars to Israel to fund their weapons... We don’t know what’s happening with [Reed’s] investment fund, and it’s really just disheartening to see the way that Reed College, the United States, and Americans, are reacting to this.”

At 1:20pm, Reed walkout participants began a twenty-minute march to the Bybee Street MAX station to join the downtown rally, which was held in Pioneer Square starting at 2:00pm and co-sponsored by organizations including Zaytuna PNW, CAIR Oregon, Portland DSA, Jewish Voice for Peace Portland, and Healthcare Workers for Palestine Portland. Approximately 30 Reedies arrived downtown on the MAX a little after 2:15pm and merged with the crowd of several hundred protestors at the main rally. While gearing up for a march through downtown Portland, attendees participated in a variety of English and Arabic-language pro-Palestinian chants demanding that the Biden administration compel a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, supporting the charge of genocide against the United States and Israel, and expressing faith in the eventual triumph of the Palestinian cause. 

After a slight delay, the march began around 2:45pm and proceeded to the area of the federal courthouse on 3 Avenue, then circled back to Pioneer Square. Chants continued along the route, led by organizers on the bed of a lifted pickup truck. The mood was particularly well-encapsulated by a chant of “No more fighting, no more fear, genocide is crystal clear!” The Quest left the march after the first circuit of the route due to low visibility in the rainy weather conditions, but organizations involved reported online that the event was concluded with speeches laying out the significance of the federal and ICJ cases. 

In a statement to the Quest after the walkout and march, Reed SJP reiterated its demands to the Reed administration originally issued in December 2023 alongside Reed SDS and YDSA. The first of these is divestment from corporations that supply arms to Israel or otherwise support the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Reed College has a 762 million dollar endowment as of 2022, which rather than being directly invested in specific corporations is managed through external management companies. While the Reed administration has previously claimed that it is unable to confirm whether or not any of their endowment is being sent to corporations in Israel due to its use of third-party managers whose portfolios can change on a day-to-day basis, SJP notes that other institutions’ management companies have still been able to release reports on where their endowments are invested and seek similar transparency from Reed. SJP’s other demands of Reed include the formation of a committee to investigate antisemitic vandalism on campus, the severing of ties with Ben-Gurion University and Hebrew University in Israel, the issuing of an apology for Bilger’s negative portrayal of student protestors in an email sent to the community on November 13, and the issuing of a public statement “condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza.” The Reed administration has yet to meet any of the demands, but SJP has been in communication with President Bilger about meeting to discuss them, and has also been working with the Office for Institutional Diversity and faculty allies to form an accountability group to discuss how the College can serve its community amidst “an unprecedented new stage of Israeli occupation and genocide.”

These rallies came on the 111th day of the ongoing Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, which the Associated Press, citing the Gaza Health Ministry, reports has killed at least 26,083 Gazans and wounded at least 64,400. Over 10,000 of the dead are children. In Gaza, which has a total population of 2.3 million people, the dead represent more than 1% of the population, and the wounded just under 3%. Additionally, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that 85% of the Gazan population has been displaced by Israel, with half of the enclave’s residents crammed into Rafah, a small southeastern area of approximately 25 square kilometers. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that none of the 36 hospitals in Gaza are currently fully functional amidst Israeli bombardment and aid restrictions, and only 15 continue to provide any level of service, with severely under-resourced medical staff forced to perform operations under fire, without anesthesia, and with insufficient medication, equipment, and labor. WHO also reports that “93% of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with insufficient food and high levels of malnutrition,” including a quarter of households facing “catastrophic” hunger, while cases of diarrhea and upper respiratory infection, which the collapsed medical system is ill-equipped to treat, have skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands.South Africa has brought a case charging Israel with genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. South Africa and Israel are both parties to the Genocide Convention, although the ICJ case is not legally connected to the case brought by CCR in the Northern District of California despite dealing with the same article of international law. On Friday the 26, the ICJ issued an interim ruling calling on Israel to take steps to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza but stopped short of mandating a ceasefire as South Africa and Palestinian advocates had sought. While the ICJ does not have an enforcement mechanism, UN Security Council member states can use failure to comply with ICJ rulings as a basis for punitive measures including sanctions and arms embargoes.