Locals for Liberation
Mission Statement
To raise money for Palestine - as well as all areas affected by Israel's genocidal campaign - specifically fundraising for shelter, medical equipment, aid supplies, and food through Southwest Asian-led organizations. Each event held by L4L will be transparent about which organization receives funds and where those funds go.
To bring awareness to and education about the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by Israel and the Zionist settler colonial project and to call for a permanent ceasefire, an absolute right of return, and an end to Israeli occupation.
To mobilize local action against global oppression because all oppression - from Louisville to Palestine - is linked.
To prioritize collaborative work with justice movements in Kentucky and foster relationships that create ground-up networks of community action.
To showcase and promote local art and artists, especially those of the Palestinian and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) diaspora. To use art as a vehicle for change, as a mirror, and as an avenue for hope.
To support, follow, and learn from historical resistance movements and organizations already in place, on Turtle Island and beyond.
We envision Locals for Liberation as an arts-centered, community-fueled mechanism for local organizing and mobilization working toward the mutual liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian people. Driven by the understanding that all oppression is inherently connected and all creative expression is inherently political, we aim to bring about a shift in our collective consciousness and spur ACTION in the face of silence and fear by turning to art, music, and cultural practices as avenues to express memory, identity, and resistance - from Palestine to Appalachia. We reject dominant structures of hierarchical and assimilationist institutional aid, and instead seek a nuanced and community-built approach to local organizing.
“It is not our differences which separate [us], but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively with the distortions which has resulted from ignoring and misnaming those differences.”
Audre Lorde, Age Race Class Sex
“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”
bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism