Pro-Palestine groups gather in Providence to march, dance and mourn the dead 

Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Rhode Island State House Saturday afternoon – the culmination of a week of events and activities put together by a coalition of community organizations, local businesses, medical professionals and students from across the state.

Organizer Maya Lehrer welcomed to the stage the first speaker of the day: Loubna Qutami, who Lehrer described as “a scholar, a feminist, a Palestinian.” As the crowd cheered, Qutami said loudly into the mic, describing the crowd before her, bedecked in the colors of the Palestinian flag, “what a beautiful sea of red, black, green and white.”

Qutami is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University, co-founder of the Palestinian Youth Movement, and a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective. I caught up with Qutami after her speech, just before the crowd began to march.

“What has kept me going this entire year is how much deep love and solidarity is between Palestinians and other communities. You know, our Palestine movement in North America is diverse,” Qutami said. “It is not only comprised of Palestinians, not only Arabs and Muslims. People from all walks of life, all faiths, all sectors, young people, children, students, youth, families, artists, healthcare workers, like everyone has played their role in really building one of the most phenomenal movements of our time in this country. And I think that is part of what has sustained me and sustained so many of my Palestinian family and friends, knowing that we’re not alone in this fight.”

The crowd made its way through downtown and towards the East side, accompanied by police cars and motorcycles, until stopping directly in front of the Brown University Investment Office. A few Brown students spoke to the halted mass about their efforts to push the school to divest from companies they say profit from human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories. The Brown Corporation is set to vote on the matter during a series of meetings later this month. I spoke with one of the members of the Brown Divest Coalition, 21-year-old Muslim American Arman Deendar.   

“We are kind of cultivating a lot of anger about the lack of transparency behind the divestment proceedings and looking to the next two weeks to really ramp up our onboarding, ramp up our base-building, because we really need everyone to be out in support of the student movement that’s pressuring institutions for divestment, especially at Brown,” Deendar said. “Because Brown is one of the first institutions of significant social and cultural influence … So this is a really crucial key moment in the broader divestment movement, because once one school divests, the rest will fall in line. We’ve seen from history. And so we’re really looking towards these next two weeks.” 

Saturday’s march was one of several pro-Palestinian events throughout the week, which included art-making, poetry, and a fundraiser by local businesses for the Middle East Children’s Alliance. And on Thursday, people packed into the Southside Cultural Center for what they called a “Resistance Dance.” 

The event featured traditional Palestinian dancing, as well as traditional Mexican folkloric dance, Korean drumming and Afro-Brazilian capoeira.

Two local dance groups, the Karameh and Sumud Dabke Troupes, performed dabke, a traditional Arab folk dance which loosely translates to “stomping on the ground.” 

Farah, a 19-year old Palestinian-American student, said it felt meaningful to be in this space of community with other forms of resistance dance from around the world. She declined to share her last name, due to concerns about being doxxed.  

“I love the dabke. It’s honestly like sort of a part of me, because I am just, I don’t know, something inside of me just dances when I see it. But it’s not just the dabke tonight. All of the other performances made me very emotional, because I really felt a sense of community,” Farah said. “I felt like we are all one under the umbrella of struggle. And I loved how everyone was able to showcase their resistance or their ancestors’ resistance through movement and sound and, you know, dance.”

Following the march on Saturday, the dwindling crowd gathered downtown for a vigil, standing around the fountain at the heart of Burnside Park. Poems were read and prayers were uttered for the lives of those lost over the course of the last year. Small electric candles were passed out as darkness crept in, while Tiana Esperanza sang “Stand Up,” a song from the movie “Harriet,” about the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

While at the vigil I talked to Maya Lehrer, one of the organizers of the week’s events. 

“It’s been really saddening to see members of my own family and members of my community continue to walk around with the smokescreen over their eyes that makes it seem as if all of this violence and murder is justified,” Lehrer said.  

Lehrer, who is Jewish, said the march, and actions like it across the nation, gave her hope. 

“The movement is working, and they show us that even if U.S. support continues to grow, it is distinctly possible that they [Israel] will no longer be able to hold on within the span of the next few years,” Lehrer said. “Just in the same way that South Africa went from being universally supported by the European powers and Israel, and the United States, to within a matter of years, all support for apartheid being pulled and apartheid falling in that country. We see that same path being possible for Palestine.”