The hidden parts of political activism: A look into Hopkins Students for Justice in Palestine

BY LUBNA AZMI, Senior Staff Writer

The organization has had two focuses: education and direct action.

Although these events show SJP’s power, they also illustrate a barrier to student organizing — discontinuity, which explains the sporadic moments of SJP’s activism work. Discontinuity from being consistent.

One of SJP’s current leaders, sophomore Adham Labwam, has been active since his freshman year. In an email to The News-Letter, he discussed SJP’s rebuilding period and his view of political organizing.

“Fortunately SJP on campus is reaching a young college-aged audience who are the most passionate about social issues like Palestine,” he wrote. “An important thing is understanding the audience and knowing what’s effective to reach them... One of the goals of political organization is making the discussion of your cause commonplace in whatever setting you’re in.”

Throughout its campus history, SJP has accomplished just that — making discussion of Palestine commonplace. SJP’s quieter moments are not the only part that helped them accomplish this. Labwam and others attribute their successes to SJP’s past. That is part of why preserving organizing history is so important: To push for a better future, organizers must learn from their predecessors.

This feeds into a common thread throughout SJP’s history — that collaboration is essential. Partnerships with other organizers, like Palestinian leaders, Brown’s Black Freedom work, Hopkins Feminists and SAPP were necessary to push SJP’s movements forward. The University’s SJP needed the support of others to be successful, just as others needed SJåP for the same reason.

What does this highlight? A joint struggle is necessary for the blooming success of any single freedom movement. It is important to acknowledge that the growing roots of one movement intertwine with the roots of others and that if movements want to win their own battles for liberation, they need to rely on each other.