Here is an interesting report from Cherie Brown and her National Coalition Building Institute, from a recent prejudice reduction leadership training she led at George Mason University.
I had a hopeful moment yesterday around Middle East peace work ( and its not always been easy these past months to find those hopeful moments) so I thought I'd share it with you.The organization that I direct, the National Coalition Building Institute has prejudice reduction leadership teams on 65 college campuses. We train teams to lead anti-oppression work on their campuses. Yesterday, I was working with folks at George Mason University. There's a large international student population on campus--with a large number of Arab (Muslim and Christian students) as well as non-Arab Muslim students. We had about 10 Arab and Muslim students and several Jewish students in the training.
We first did a speak-out with a Palestinian student. We asked her to tell us a time she'd experienced racism--as a Palestian. She wept (and many of us cried with her) as she told us what it was like for her as an 8 year old when she went with her father for the first time to Palestine--and he was strip searched at the airport in Tel Aviv by Israeli soldiers and how humiliated and confused she was as she watched her father's humiliation. ( Her father refused to talk with her about it afterwards. ). When we asked the group what had touched them hearing her story--many students cried as they said they couldn't imagine all that she and her father had gone through.
Then the next day in the training, we did a speak-out with a Jewish student and we asked her to talk about a time she'd experienced anti-Jewish oppression (I had to spend about 15 minutes with her before hand helping her think of a story--because she kept saying she had never experienced Jewish oppression). When she told her story - she talked about how alone and isolated she feels on campus when she walks by the Arab student tables everyday --particularly on one day when there was a video playing about Israelis killing Palestinian children and using their blood for religious rituals.
After the Jewish student spoke--and we asked the group what had touched them hearing her story--one of the Arab students put up her hand. She was crying and said-- "I sit at those tables every day. Its important for me to sit at those tables because I don't think the media tells the world about our story and all the horrible things that are happening to us --as Palestinians." And, then, she went on to say, "But, I'm so glad you told your story. I didn't think about what it might be like for someone Jewish to walk by our table and how hurtful it might be for you."
After seeing how powerful it was to hear each other's stories-- and they realized how much they had to learn from each other the students decided they wanted to work together to set up campus wide forums where students and staff can hear each other's speak outs instead of just rehearsing hate messages at each other from all the demonstrations and counter demonstrations that have been taking place on campus.
Page last updated May 22nd, 2002