FRSO Dallas hosts ‘Hands Off Everywhere’ panel

Dallas, TX – On January 25, 45 people attended FRSO’s virtual Hands Off Everywhere Panel in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s anti-war views. The panel featured speakers from Freedom Road Socialist Organization Dallas, DFW-Anti War Committee (DAWC), the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression – Dallas (NAARPR – D), Shias for Justice, Juventud Unida Por la Independencia (JUPI), and Palestinian Youth Movement.

The panel kicked off with Faye Damara, the barrio walk coordinator for NAARPR-Dallas who stated, “King recognized, like all of us here, that for a people to achieve individual moral freedom means to achieve collective political freedom; that to achieve political freedom means the endowment of the right to the pursuit of national self-determination for all; that this pursuit can only be achieved by a radical redistribution of both economic and state power in favor of the exploited and of the marginalized.”

Kya Gonzalez of JUPI stated, “Advocating for Puerto Rican sovereignty has been routinely disrupted and targeted by the U.S. government, something MLK himself experienced in his fight for civil rights.” Gonzalez also highlighted the oppression of Haitians by ICE.

Justin Mitchell, a member of FRSO and the media coordinator for DFW-Anti War Committee, reported on the recent solidarity delegation to Venezuela, “The same people that have been attacking them, sanctioning them, bombing their fishermen, and now of course kidnapped their president, are the same people exploiting our labor, killing our planet, putting us under the thumb of student and medical debt, and the same people attacking oppressed peoples here in the United States.”

Sumayyah Chennault of Palestinian Youth Movement connected the occupation of Palestine to ICE terror, saying, “This moment provides us with a critical opportunity to make the ties between imperial violence abroad and repression and violence domestically.”

Sabah Shaw of Shias for Justice – Dallas closed out the panel with her analysis of Iran’s connection to the Palestinian resistance and the role of sanctions in destabilizing and delegitimizing opponents of the United States.

“Any analysis that talks about hardships in Iran without centering sanctions, regime-change agendas, and Western violence, is analysis that is justifying intervention,” concluded Shah.

The panel was followed by a Q&A and calls to action to upcoming events, including a NAARPR rally at Dallas City Hall on January 29 at 7 p.m. to condemn the latest murder by ICE agents in Minneapolis.

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