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The Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) is a coalition of North American organizations dedicated to implementing divestment and boycott strategies as a component of human rights activism in order to realize both equality and justice for all people residing within Israel/Palestine. The PSM endorses only non-violent strategies and tactics, and is dedicated to non-violence in its own actions. The PSM is absolutely opposed to all forms of bigotry and discrimination, including, racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. Much more information about the organization can be found at www.palestinesolidaritymovement.org.
Since the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September of 2000, students and community activists from North America and around the world have renewed solidarity work with Palestine by forming new local grassroots organizations. As part of this renewal, these student organizations joined with long time solidarity formations in February of 2002 at a conference titled the “Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement†at the University of California in Berkeley, hosted by the Students for Justice in Palestine. This conference marked the beginning of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM), which has subsequently hosted large conferences at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (October 2002), Ohio State University in Columbus (November 2003) and Duke University (October 2004).
The resistance tool adopted by consensus at the first conference, modeled after the massive campaign of solidarity with the people of South Africa, was divestment. Divestment (disinvestment or divestiture) simply means to remove financial connections, namely investments. PSM activists demand that universities and institutions divest from Israel and institutions and corporations with financial connections to Israel. Since the first conference at UC Berkeley, the movement to divest has grown exponentially, demonstrating that divestment was intrinsically appealing to activists who have been frustrated with their attempts to change governmental policy with little success. It has giving activists the ability to work locally and diversify their targets. The movement to divest has grown from one university in 2002 to hundreds of universities and communities today. Divestment campaigns have reframed discussion on Palestine, accelerated pre-existing education efforts and intensified action in the struggle to defend Palestinian human rights.
