Photo Credit: Bill Hackwell.

On Labor Day weekend 2025, 4,600 people converged in Detroit for the second Peoples Conference for Palestine. Over three very full days, the multi-dimensional meaning and mandate of the banner, Gaza is the Compass, was explored by activists, scholars, artists, labor organizers and elected leaders from across North America and Palestine. Although the U.S. denied visas to almost all participants from Palestine, they were able to share their stories and analysis virtually. As PYM (Palestinian Youth Movement) organizer Taher Daleh declared unequivocally at the opening of the conference, “They have tried to intimidate us with smears, with false accusations, and with every single available threat at their disposal to stop this conference from happening. We will not stop.”

I had also attended the first Peoples Conference for Palestine in May 2024. Tens of thousands more people in Gaza have been slaughtered, most of Gaza has been razed to the ground, 94% of all hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, at least 248 journalists have been killed, and famine has taken over Gaza before the world’s eyes. Only the most hardened genocide deniers still refuse to recognize the barbaric scope of the genocide being intentionally planned and executed by the Zionist state of Israel with the full backing of the United States.

In the face of the cataclysmic chaos and demonic destruction being wreaked on Gaza, the conference dared to assert Gaza is the Compass! Rejecting the extinction and erasure that is the purpose of genocide, they/we insisted that Gaza is indeed the center of the world in this moment in history. In the words of Dr. Mohammad Mustafa, a Palestinian emergency doctor living in Australia who has done medical missions to Gaza, “Gaza is the measure of our humanity. It is the litmus test that reveals who we are; as individuals, as a nation, as a world.”

In the welcome to the conference, the organizers explained their vision. ”Gaza keeps our path true,… it exposes the forces that we have to contend with on the path to victory, and it reveals the horizon of liberation. Throughout the conference, speaker after speaker spoke to the centrality of Gaza historically, politically, and morally. And the thousands of people who came to Detroit were mobilized to embrace this vision and together strengthen our determination to propel the movement forward.

Sitting together in the main hall named for recently murdered Al-Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, we heard directly from Palestinian leaders and organizers in Palestine and the diaspora about the many facets of the struggle that the Zionists/imperialists continually try to silence. Their presentations were not abstract but were rooted in their own experiences fighting for Gaza and Palestinian freedom.

Dr. Monadel Herzallah’s opening remarks set a compelling personal and political tone for the rest of the conference. Rama Kased, a leader with USPCN (US Palestinian Community Network), introduced Monadel as someone who has supported the development of intergenerational activists for decades. Barely a month after the Israeli attack on Gaza began in October 2023, Monadel, who is from Gaza, had already lost five family members to the Zionist assault. He decided to become one of the plaintiffs who sued the Biden administration for its complicity in genocide, seeking an emergency order to stop all military and diplomatic support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Although the lawsuit was unfortunately dismissed in October 2024, it succeeded early on in shining a light on the U.S. role in the unfolding genocide.

In his talk, Monadel mourned how “the world has learned about Gaza not through its songs, its history or its delicious oranges. They learned about it through its grief.” He described how he found out about the death of his twelve year old niece, Sally Muhammad Herzallah, when a video of her father saying goodbye to her as she died went viral. Monadel declared, “We must follow the example of Gaza which is standing in the face of the most........

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