BDS, Racial Justice & Pinkwashing in the Trump Era

GWSS Colloquium Series: Workshop

Palestinian activists developed the concept of “pinkwashing” to describe the ways the Israeli government uses gay rights as a cover for its daily human rights abuses and violations of international law. Activists in the US have extended the analysis to include how police, prison, and military institutions attempt to incorporate LGBTQ people into forms of state violence said to benefit and protect us.

This workshop will analyze how pinkwashing works and how it impacts global movements for social and racial justice. We will also consider challenges faced by US-based queer/trans activists in the current context of ramped up Islamophobia and criminalization of immigration under the Trump regime.

As Divest Week @ UMN winds up, come and talk about ways to resist Islamophobia, homo/transphobia, and work in solidarity with the global BDS movement.

Craig Willse is an associate professor of cultural studies at George Mason University, where he is also faculty adviser to Students Against Israeli Apartheid. He is the author of The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). He is co-editor of recent special issues of The Scholar & Feminist Online and Women & Performance, as well as Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death (Duke University Press, 2011).

More Info:

UMN Divest Week: https://www.facebook.com/events/1836610299971254/

What is BDS?
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity. Israel is occupying and colonizing Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law. BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Eleven years since its launch, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.

What Is Pinkwashing?
Pinkwashing is a term Palestinian queer and trans activists began using to describe how Israel markets itself as an LGBT-friendly nation in order to draw attention from the violent colonialism of its military and settlement operations in Palestine. The "Brand Israel" campaign represents Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims globally, as homophobic -- thus making Israel seem like a haven of queerness. More broadly, pinkwashing can be used to describe how police, the military, gentrification campaigns, and corporations are "gay-friendly" and progressive, concealing the harm they do in reality.

The above text is adapted from these sources:

"Building Safety through Solidarity: An Interview with Dean Spade & Craig Willse," https://deadlyexchange.org/building-safety-through-solidarity-an-interview-with-dean-spade-craig-willse/

"What Is BDS?" https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds

This event is sponsored by the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies.