CHICAGO (RNS) — On Friday and Saturday (Jan. 12 and 13), almost 2,000 religion leaders, politicians, activists and operatives — heirs of the Civil Rights Motion — convened for an Emergency Summit for Gaza hosted on the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition in partnership with the Arab American Institute.

Jackson and his longtime good friend and collaborator James Zogby, AAI founder, had been each current within the function of senior leaders. The Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III, the present president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and Maya Berry, government director at AAI, spoke and helped preside.

Leaders had been joined by quite a few dignitaries, together with U.S. and state representatives and Chicago aldermen — U.S. Reps. Jonathan Jackson, Jesús “Chuy” Garcia and Cori Bush, and state Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, amongst others. The numerous kaffiyehs, conventional Palestinian scarves, being worn all through the room highlighted the Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights.

The coalition that organized the summit, together with Church buildings for Center East Peace, the place I’m a fellow, is calling on the White House and Congress to advocate for a everlasting cease-fire, the discharge of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners being held with out due course of, complete entry for humanitarian support to Gaza and the enforcement of situations on U.S. funding to Israel which might be already in U.S. legislation and utilized to each different nation that receives U.S. army support.

The summit highlighted the historic connections between the American Civil Rights Motion and the battle for Palestinian rights.

Panelists on the Emergency Summit for Gaza occasion on the Rainbow PUSH Coalition nationwide headquarters in Chicago. (Photograph courtesy of Ben Norquist)

Members gathered in particular person and nearly to reaffirm the civil rights tenet that “injustice wherever is a risk to justice in every single place,” a chorus reiterated by a number of audio system. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used the phrase to insist that injustice in Birmingham, Alabama, was a risk to justice all through the nation. By the identical token, the event website states that it’s “our ethical obligation” to face in opposition to injustice in Gaza and referred to as on People to advocate for an finish to the violence and for root causes to be addressed.

A winter storm blasted Chicago on Friday, however organizers solid forward. A whole lot of contributors arrived by means of blizzard situations, braving harmful roads to be current as snow piled up and temperatures plunged.

A number of organizations co-sponsored the summit, together with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular teams. Haynes celebrated this numerous participation as an expression, in King’s phrases, of the “beloved neighborhood,” working throughout racial, spiritual and geographic strains for a shared imaginative and prescient of justice.

Within the room had been leaders of efforts to move native resolutions throughout the nation calling for cease-fire in Gaza; members of worldwide human rights organizations documenting the violence and its results in Gaza; and activists mobilizing constituencies to talk to their representatives.

The complete program additionally included Cornel West, who holds the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary and is a presidential candidate; Nina Turner, former Ohio state senator and now a senior fellow on the New College Institute on Race, Energy and Political Financial system; Eva Borgwardt, nationwide spokesperson for IfNotNow, a motion of American Jews searching for justice for Palestinians; John Dabeet, president of the U.S. Palestinian Council; and the Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor at New Start Missionary Baptist Church close to Atlanta. A number of the audio system had a busy weekend, splitting their time between the summit, the March for Gaza in Washington, D.C., on Saturday and MLK Day observances.

This connection between the American Civil Rights Motion and Palestinian liberation may be seen no less than way back to the responses of some Black American teams to the 1967 battle, when Israel first occupied the West Financial institution and Gaza. Teams such because the Scholar Nonviolent Coordinating Committee got here to view the Palestinians as a part of a world wrestle in opposition to colonialism and racism.

James Zogby addresses the Emergency Summit for Gaza occasion on the Rainbow PUSH Coalition nationwide headquarters in Chicago. (Photograph courtesy of Ben Norquist)

This solidarity is embodied at present within the relationship between Jesse Jackson and Zogby, a relationship that goes again to the mid-1970s when Jackson was among the many first civil rights leaders to help Zogby’s new Palestine Human Rights Marketing campaign. Different civil rights leaders additionally went on to supply their help, together with lots of those that had been near King.

Zogby recollects that when Jackson requested him to serve in Jackson’s 1984 marketing campaign for U.S. president, Zogby instructed him: “You’ll accomplish extra within the subsequent 4 months than you’ve got within the final 4 years.”

“And it was true. I can’t let you know how energizing it was for Arab People to have somebody operating for president wish to hearken to them,” Zogby mentioned.

These connections between the American Civil Rights Motion and the motion for Palestinian rights had been celebrated all through the summit, as references had been made to proponents of racial justice in the USA — King, Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer and James Baldwin — alongside Palestinian American writers equivalent to Edward Mentioned and Rashid Khalidi.

Senior leaders on the occasion, a few of whom had been a part of the Civil Rights Motion of the ’60s and ’70s, appealed to the youth within the room. At one level, the “younger folks” had been requested to face up and be acknowledged. Dozens rose all through the sanctuary. “The youthful era developing within the motion are rediscovering their connections to Palestinian liberation,” mentioned Zogby. “It’s been misplaced on some, however the roots had been all the time there.”

Certainly, Jesse Jackson has been advocating for peace and justice for Israelis and Palestinians for many years over quite a few journeys to the Center East, conferences with Center East leaders and public statements. This occasion, that includes senior, current and future management, means that legacy is continuous.

The occasion passed off surrounded by Jewish pictures adorning the stained glass panels and the plaster aid all through the historic synagogue that serves because the headquarters for Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The constructing is in Kenwood, in a geography saturated with Black historical past and the battle for racial justice. Emmett Until’s home is minutes away, starkly resonating with the unfolding destiny of kids in Gaza.

The Civil Rights Motion’s lexicon was in prepared use all through the occasion. Jesse Jackson led the room in a call-and-response prayer from earlier days within the motion.

“I’m someone!”

“I’m someone,” got here the response.

“I’m a toddler of God!”

“I’m a toddler of God,” the viewers referred to as again. They didn’t want prompting — they knew the phrases already. It was like that all through the occasion.

This was a gaggle that shared a standard language developed over many years of working for civil rights in the USA and liberation for oppressed folks world wide, behind the language a set of commitments now main them to talk up and converse out for a cease-fire and justice for the Palestinians.

(Ben Norquist serves because the Ambassador Warren Clark Fellow at Church buildings for Center East Peace, the place he research the shrinking area for civil and human rights actions in Israel. He’s additionally engaged on a e book about how American Christians have interaction with land and place, due in 2025. The views expressed on this commentary don’t essentially replicate these of Faith Information Service.)