On Tuesday night in Oakland, about 70 artists — mostly in their 20s and 30s, with some as old as 80 — filed into a small storefront near Fruitvale BART. In attendance were Stanford students who had participated in the pro-Palestinian campus encampment, protest drummers, political poets, documentary filmmakers, muralists and choreographers. Emory Douglas, graphic artist for the Black Panther Party, joined the gathering too.
As Israel’s U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza continues, these creatives gathered at the Oakland Liberation Center, an education and event space run by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, for the first exploratory Bay Area meeting of Artists Against Apartheid. The goal of Artists Against Apartheid, a loose national coalition, is to use creative work to shift dehumanizing narratives about Palestinians, and support their resistance against oppression.
Curator and arts educator Nora Boyd, one of the volunteers behind the event, kicked off the evening by sharing her observations about the structure of the art world, and how it supports the interests of the ultra-wealthy.
“Like many of you, I’ve been involved in the struggle for Palestinian liberation for years,” she said. “And I think a lot of us have felt this: We just want to connect the inspiring and fulfilling work that we do in the arts with the justice, urgency and absolute rightness of this struggle. … We have these voices as artists, but we don’t have the spaces to use them for what we want.”
Boyd shared some background information about how Artists Against Apartheid began. Last year, at an activist hub in New York called The People’s Forum, artists penned an open letter pledging to use their work to support Palestinians, who “face brutal and humiliating conditions” that have “earned Israel the designation as an apartheid state by human rights organizations across the globe,” the letter reads.
Over 15,000 artists — including celebrities like Kehlani, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Lil Yachty — have since signed the letter, and nine regional chapters of the group have formed in Los Angeles, Chicago and other U.S. cities.
A musician and organizer from Palestinian Youth Movement, who identified themself as Salma T., spoke to the group about how creative work in the West is treated as a product for consumption, and often viewed as separate from social movements.
Art is “the quickest way to reach people because you take these complex ideas, these political analyses, these big positions, and you are synthesizing in a way that makes people feel,” said Salma. “And that’s a really, really powerful thing. … I’m really proud and excited to be part of the inception of this space here in the Bay for us to organize together.”
The artists then grabbed snacks, colored pencils and construction paper and split into groups of five to eight people. Prompts appeared on the projector, and people of different ages, ethnicities and artistic disciplines discussed how the witnessing of mass killings of Palestinian civilians has shifted the way they view their role as artists.
Indeed, Artists Against Apartheid met during a devastating week of news from Gaza. On Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent camp at a hospital where displaced Gazans were sheltering, and footage spread on social media of four people burning alive. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, according to the Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 42,000 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Recently, reports have surfaced of mass starvation and stray dogs eating decomposing bodies in the streets of Gaza.
“It’s been over a year since Oct. 7, but this genocide has been happening for many, many years,” said jo “love/speak” cruz of the hip-hop collective Audiopharmacy. “As someone who comes from a place that has experienced colonization itself, the Philippines, I feel like [it’s important to] not only to raise awareness, but to really activate our communities to push policies and elect people that are really going to understand that it is through this liberation of Palestine that we’re all going to be able to be free.”
Emory Douglas, who served as the Black Panthers’ Minister of Culture, read to the group from his Political Artist Manifesto, a collection of 12 guidelines he wrote for young artists. His advice included to “create art of social concerns that even a child can understand” and “be prepared if necessary to defend and explain what you communicate in your art.”
Douglas was one of 50 artists and organizers who recently debuted a collaborative mural connecting social struggles in Oakland to those of Gaza and the West Bank. In an interview, he said that in the past year, he’s ramped up work commenting on the Palestinian struggle. “The focal point being ‘made in America’ in relationship to the bombs and everything that’s happening,” he said.
Looking out approvingly onto the young people engrossed in animated discussions, Douglas added, “They continue to be inspired to be informed, enlightened. And they’ll figure it out as they evolve.”
As breakout groups wrapped up, artists shared out to the larger group. Some talked about ideas for art protests, while others strategized around sharing skills. Organizers laid out plans to meet monthly and invited attendees to join a Telegram group chat.
“Being in a warm, supportive, multigenerational space dedicated to learning and to liberation, truly, I could just feel the optimism,” said a Stanford student, who asked that her name be withheld due to disciplinary action she is facing at her university for participating in the protest encampment. “As a student, I just felt like there’s so much knowledge and experience around me.”