At the present moment, there is a woman sitting at the table in front of me, furiously pecking at her keyboard with one hand and munching on a sandwich with another. To my right are nine men from the community gathered around two chessboards. Their chess pieces roll along the dark brown wooden table. The woman in front of me just picked up her backpack and left. Either she caught me staring too hard or her class begins in a few. Let’s hope it’s the latter.

These are your everyday people, each going about his or her own day with his or her own priorities in mind. But I’ve been taught to recognize the proverbial everyday person as a friend and a valuable asset — not to me, per se, but to the millions everywhere who face oppressions that prevent them from becoming everyday people or even from doing everyday things. It’s a bit abstract but the “line theory” does a good job of explaining what I mean, specifically within the context of the Palestinian narrative and even more specifically within the context of the upcoming Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) National Conference.

One year ago someone asked me who I target when helping to organize actions or events centered around the occupation of Palestine. My initial answer, The Americans Who Don’t Know, was too narrow and my second answer, The Opposition, was a waste of a breath. It wasn’t that I was targeting the wrong audience but, technically, I was.

Imagine a line. Or if you’re reading this after a busy day, let me imagine one for you. Presently, the line represents nothing. So let us quickly define the line’s boundaries with visible points.

One point represents you, the organizers or the educators, the ones who already Know. The other point represents the opposition, in this case the ones who, for example, insist that human rights laws are meant to be broken and that oppression is actually a protective maneuver. [Read more...]