Amid Israel’s unrelenting violence against Palestinians, the Palestine solidarity movement has been unwavering in its calls to end the genocide. In the United States, it can be hard to keep track of all of the disruptions, marches, and shutdowns happening nationally. Internationally, it’s even easier to miss major events. However, on February 1, I was immediately aware of a blockade shutting down the Port of Vancouver because my friend Harsha Walia was participating and posting on social media about the action. Harsha has been fiercely committed to Palestine solidarity work in recent months, and after seeing the inspiring work her community put into the port blockade, I wanted to get her perspective on what the work looks like in her community and how the movement there has sustained its momentum.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kelly Hayes: Can you tell us a bit about what the Palestine Solidarity Movement has looked like in Vancouver and how you’ve participated?

Harsha Walia: The Palestine Solidarity Movement in the West Coast truly feels like a mass movement in the sense of an incredible number of collectives and organizations and neighborhood groups who are involved in the movement with Palestinian leadership that is intergenerational from elders to youth. One of the oldest Canadian Palestinian organizers lives in Vancouver, and so we are so lucky that he is here and that we get to learn from his wisdom. He started a Palestinian organization in the ’70s that used to organize as part of anti-colonial movements, third-worldist movements, Indigenous liberation struggles, and Black liberation struggles in the ’60s and ’70s. So the roots in this city are incredibly deep for that kind of transnational liberation work. And then, of course, continuing to now, the transnational work of the Palestinian Youth Movement. And so there’s an incredibly strong legacy of this work that is continuing.

What’s also quite incredible is that there are a number of neighborhood-based groups that have never really existed before in my experience. And so there are people, there are about seven or eight different neighborhood-based groups that are organizing just in their neighborhoods for Palestine and doing things like dinners to bring people out. And it’s really like broader community building, of course, under the banner of ending the genocide and Palestinian liberation, but really as all organizing is also deeply committed to intersectional understandings of liberation work, of community building and relationality as central to liberation work. And so it’s just been so deeply inspiring at a time of immense grief and anger to be able to come together with literally tens of thousands of people to fight to end this genocide and to be part of a global movement to free Palestine and free all oppressed peoples.

Are there direct actions or boycott efforts you’ve engaged with that you feel have been particularly impactful?

As we know, the BDS movement is over a decade old, called by the BDS National Movement, and the call for boycott divestment sanction strategies that we’ve been using really follows under the guidance and leadership of the BDS National Committee. And there are a number of important targets in Canada. One of them for us is Indigo Books and Music. And Indigo, the CEO of Indigo has a private foundation that funds foreign soldiers to go fight in the IOF. So there’s a very clear link between this bookstore, this corporate chain, and the Israeli occupation forces. And so this boycott has been going on for a very long time but has really amplified since October 7th. In particular, it’s also been escalated because the CEO of this bookstore has also really escalated her attacks against the Palestinian and Palestinian solidarity movement. And simply for postering in........

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