Desmond Tutu's Letter to Univ. of Arizona: http://nomoredeaths.org/University-of-Arizona-NMD/tutu-support-letter.html
UA Student Divestment Statement: http://nomoredeaths.org/University-of-Arizona-NMD/ua-nmm-divestment-statement-against-caterpillar-and-motorola.html

National Media Contacts:
Brown University: Crystal Vance Guerra: 773-206-1181 / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Colorado State University: Dylan Gallacher: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The Evergreen State College: Rob Jantzen: 316-200-5537 / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
University of Arizona: Gabriel Schivone: 520-302-6006 / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
University of Massachusetts, Amherst: Catherine D'Ignazio: 617-501-2441 / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
University of New Mexico: Danya Mustafa: 505-850-9554 / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

An open letter by esteemed South African Archbishop and Nobel peace prize winner, Desmond Tutu, addressed to the University of Arizona (UA), has coincided with the onset of a national student movement of massive mock walls to divide numerous campuses in just about every corner of the U.S. to demonstrate Latina/o migrant, indigenous and Palestinian solidarity.

Students at the UA made history last month when they erected the largest (1200-ft) mock apartheid wall in the U.S. to divide their more than 50,000-person campus in protest of American policies of support for Israel’s 44-year military occupation and settlement of Palestinian ancestral lands and of U.S. Immigration and border enforcement.  Students also released their statement advocating divestment from UA-partnered corporations enabling such policies.  The Associated Press first picked up the story of their mock wall on Mar. 19.  Archbishop Tutu heard about the students’ wall and divestment initiative and offered his support, at the invitation of the students.

The student statement was dated Mar. 28 by the student group, No Más Muertes (UA NMM), and marks the first public U.S.-university based call for divestment or boycott from corporations supporting racist policies and practices against Latina/o migrant communities and indigenous peoples in AZ and nationwide. Their divestment call is modeled from the current global movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.  Tutu’s letter was intentionally dated on Land Day (Mar. 30), also known as international BDS day, commemorating the day in 1976 when Israeli forces shot and killed six young Palestinian citizens of Israel protesting continuing illegal military occupation and settlement of Palestine.

In his letter Tutu expressed admiration for the students who erected the mock wall at the UA, and remarked the effort reminded him of student activists who erected mock shanty towns throughout American campuses in the 1980s to protest the brutal conditions of the South African apartheid regime while using the tactic to demonstrate student support of divestment from companies profiting from Apartheid.  “It is my hope,” Tutu wrote, “that the creative action by the students will inspire a new movement of mock walls dividing campuses across the U.S….”

Students, however, are already way ahead of him.  Following the UA’s “Concrete Connections” wall last month, similar mock walls are being erected across the country at institutions as diverse as Brown University, the University of New Mexico (UNM), The Evergreen State College (TESC), UMass Amherst, and others.  Many of the organizers have been coordinating cross-country over the past year to launch their walls.

Tomorrow (Friday, April 8), students at Brown University will erect their wall bearing the same name as the wall which divided the University of Arizona campus for ten days last month.  Crystal Vance Guerra is one of the organizers of Semana Chicana, a week-long series of events addressing issues relevant to the Mexican and larger Latino/a student population at Brown.  The culminating event, after which the week is themed, is the Concrete Connections mock wall, which is to be erected in the middle of campus on Friday.  This is the third year that such a wall will be erected by the joint efforts of Semana Chicana, Brown Students for Justice in Palestine (BSJP) and Brown Immigrant Rights Coalition (BIRC).

“We seek to present the reality of the situations facing Palestinians and migrants,” said Vance Guerra, member of both BIRC and BSJP. “We are not saying that they are exactly the same but that border enforcement and the Israeli apartheid wall and occupation of Palestine are intimately, concretely -- connected: economically, politically and ideologically.”

Violent restrictions of movement, the deaths of thousands, forced displacement and the use of national security as justification, are examples of the connections between U.S. and Israeli state actions that the students at Brown are aiming to convey.  U.S. and Israeli companies are developing and profiting from the technologies which perpetuate human rights violations both at the U.S./Mexico border and in Palestine.  Students are highlighting the parallels in anti-immigrant and anti-Palestinian attitudes and laws within the U.S. and Israel respectively.

“The wall in both countries is being built by the same Israeli company, Elbit Systems.  Motorola, Caterpillar, Boeing and General Electric supply surveillance and military technologies to Israel and to the U.S.” said  Francesca Contreras, active member of both BIRC and BSJP and a Mexican-American Jew who spent her childhood in South Africa and Israel.  “The same technology used at the U.S./Mexico border is being tested and used by Israel and vice versa against Latino/a migrants, indigenous peoples and Palestinians.”  These connections will be explored in detail during a public presentation Friday afternoon organized by both BIRC and BSJP.

Catherine D’Ignazio has been among organizers of a mass wall that will divide the North Campus from the South Campus of UMass Amherst beginning April 20.  The wall will have a special focus on U.S. policy effects on ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation -- the U.S.’s second-largest Native American reservation -- which has been cut into two parts by the wall since its erection in 2007 by the Department of Homeland Security.

This past February, UA NMM hosted a national “Concrete Connections” conference in Tucson which student groups attended from all across the country to discuss linking issues of Latino/a migrant, indigenous and Palestinian struggles. 

UNM student Danya Mustafa attended the UA Conference in February.  Her group, UNM Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, is planning to erect their wall next semester, also representing both issues.  “We feel that students and faculty on campus need to be directly aware of the situation that is happening abroad, as well as in our own backyard, instead of just hearsay.”

Evergreen students in TESC Divest are currently planning their own wall.  “Since the TESC administration and the board of trustees refuses to deal with the massive student support for divestment -- the mock wall could put the occupation in the forefront of the conversation on campus.  The issues of immigrant and Palestinian human rights cannot be separated when the same companies profit off of the separation wall in Palestine and on the U.S./Mexico border,” said Anna-Marie Murano, TESC Divest alumnus.

“We were inspired by the Concrete Connections conference held at UA,” said BIRC and BSJP member Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn,“ and we are excited to see that others have also been inspired to build similar mock walls to bind the issues, already linked at their core.  This is just the beginning of a national movement that has already spanned from coast to coast.”

A book collection, also called Concrete Connections, is also in the works, created by and for students, with well-known guest contributors Joseph Nevins, Jeff Halper, Avi Chomsky, and others.

###