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Depending on which side you are on, May 15th can either be a day for celebration or mourning. For Israelis, it is the joyous day when Israel became an independent nation-state. For Palestinians, it means something completely different: Nakba Day. “Nakba,” in Arabic, means “catastrophe”. Understanding this interpretation, and the present-day suffering, is important to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Palestinian graffiti reads “The separation will fall”. A sign of optimism among Palestinians.
Israel’s independence in 1948 resulted in the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. Although some left by choice, the majority were forcibly expelled. This expulsion was a systematic policy orchestrated by Zionist political and military leaders, called Plan Dalet (or “Plan D”). The policy’s goal was to create a Jewish-only state in territory that belonged to the native Palestinians for thousands of years. Since the Palestinian Arabs were obviously unwilling to give up their land, Israeli militias forced them out. The refugees then fled to neighboring countries, such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and other parts of the world, including the United States and Great Britain. This is the catastrophe that Palestinians mourn on Nakba Day. Read the rest of this entry »
Forty years ago, on April 3, 1969, more than 800 people met in Stanford University’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium to form what became known as the April Third Movement (A3M). This movement called upon Stanford and the Stanford Research Institute, which was owned by the university, to halt chemical and biological warfare research, classified research and other programs related to the Vietnam War. The April Third Movement was more than just an activist movement that took place at Stanford. It was part of a national youth movement that mobilized against America’s colonial and atrocious war in Southeast Asia. This movement occurred on university campuses across America, in which students organized sit-ins, teach-ins and rallies, printed flyers and occupied buildings to express moral outrage against and put an end to the war in Vietnam. Through their hard work and passionate organizing, Stanford students were successful in eliminating classified research at Stanford and contributed to the popular movement that ended the Vietnam War. 
Blues African 