By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — Hundreds of Pro-Palestine Protesters gathered in Nashville for the May Day Rally and March to call for a ceasefire on what they mark as an ethnic genocide against the Palestinian people by the Israeli government. Groups hosting the march included Palestine Hurra Collective Nashville (PHCN), Sunrise Movement Nashville (SMN), Tennesseans for Palestine, Middle Tennessee Christians for Justice in Palestine, Nashville Educators Unite, and Vanderbilt Diversity Collective. Sudeep, an organizer and member of SMN and PHCN, said the event was intended to act as a space of community grief for the many Nashvillians who are from or have family in Palestine. Sudeep said the event was also an act of solidarity with the pro-Palestine student encampment protests being conducted nationwide, including the “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” which has been taking place at Vanderbilt University for over a month and led to the eviction, suspension, and expulsion of several students and the arrest of a journalist from the Nashville Scene.
Sudeep said Vanderbilt still has a chance to right their wrongdoings by dropping the legal charges filed, dropping student sanctions, and allowing the student body to vote to speak their minds. Student voting rights were the issue that led to the protests after an amendment to the Vanderbilt Student Government Constitution was removed from the student ballot in late March by Vanderbilt administration that would prevent student government funds from going to certain businesses that support Israel. Sudeep said the communities surrounding these students need to “fill up for our students,” as they are taking massive risks to their future livelihoods.
“The students have essentially pulled off the most powerful act for Palestine in Nashville’s history,” Sudeep said. “And the students felt compelled to do that because the community did not step in, and once the students did complete this action they have not received the support that students of other encampments have received.”
Sudeep said the May Day Rally and March organizer demands include prominent institutions and government leaders to divest from businesses who are currently involved in supplying Israel with materials being used in the conflict against Palestine. For example, the construction company Caterpillar (CAT) whose D9R bulldozers supplied to the Israeli military are currently being used to bulldoze the homes of Palestinians along the West Bank. Sudeep said he and PHCN believe it is past time that Tennessee elected officials called for a ceasefire in Palestine as over 30,000 people are dead and 70,000 are injured to date.
Sudeep said some of the largest obstacles in spreading their message of ceasefire has been the aggressive response from state governments and institutions against protesters. He said this includes Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier spreading misinformation, like that students had exited voluntarily in the early days of the campus encampment protest when in reality, Sudeep said, the students had been threatened with arrest. He said Vanderbilt also claimed the pro-Palestine protest had turned violent while displaying blurred and sped-up footage.
“We watched the unaltered footage and that’s not what happened, the students were very nonviolent,” Sudeep said. “Small things like this where the institutions in power have been spreading misinformation or just straight up lying as Diermeier has … that does alter the message significantly.”
Sudeep said despite all the events unfolding in the United States regarding the protests, the most important thing is to keep the bulk of our attention on the conflict in Palestine and call for more action by elected officials, institutions, and fellow Tennesseans.
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