Nanaimo Municipal Action for Palestine
Municipal Candidates and Council of Nanaimo
*If you are a candidate, please contact us at sfpc.nanaimo@gmail.com to let us know your stance*
Nanaimo Municipal Action for Palestine (SFPC)
Nanaimo has a long-standing and active community movement for Palestinian liberation. Since October, 2023, people in Nanaimo have organized actions for Palestine every single week, maintaining a consistent public presence in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine.
These actions have brought together community members, students, workers, families, faith communities, Palestinians and allies. The liberation of Palestine is a global struggle for justice, freedom, and self-determination. For generations, Palestinians have endured displacement, occupation, apartheid, racial discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and ongoing violence through a settler-colonial project sustained by international and Canadian political, military, and economic support.
This sustained organizing demonstrates that solidarity with Palestine is not a passing political position in Nanaimo. Our community has shown, week after week, month after month, and year after year, that our citizens are committed to ending the genocide and supporting the liberation of Palestine.
Our candidates will listen to, and work alongside, the people who have been organizing in Nanaimo for years, and will use municipal power to turn that community commitment into meaningful, local action.
Since October 2023, Israel has been actively committing a genocide in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza faced mass killing, forced displacement, man-made starvation, the destruction of homes, hospitals, and schools. Palestinians in the West Bank have faced escalating military violence, settler attacks, land dispossession, and forced displacement. This is part of an ongoing system of occupation and colonization affecting Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948. That system imposes a siege, occupation, settlement expansion on Palestinian lands while denying Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and right of return.
As residents of Nanaimo, we recognize that municipal governments are not separate from global struggles against colonialism, racism, and genocide. Local governments have a responsibility to ensure that public institutions, policies, spending, and public spaces do not contribute to oppression or silence those who speak against it.
Standing against Zionism as a system of colonialism, occupation, and racial domination is not hostility toward Jewish people or Judaism. We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, racism in all forms, and the conflation of Jewish identity with Zionism or with the state of israel.
We understand Palestinian liberation as part of the wider struggle against colonialism and systemic racism, which also includes the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples on whose traditional territories we live and organize. We support Indigenous self-determination, and sovereignty, and recognize that solidarity must be grounded in meaningful relationships, accountability, and action.
Upon election, our candidates will:
Publicly condemn the ongoing genocide, occupation, apartheid, and forced displacement of Palestinians.
Recognize and adopt the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association’s framework on anti-Palestinian racism and refute the politically biased IHRA definition of Jew-hatred (anti-semitism).
Develop a municipal plan to address anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, and the suppression of Palestine solidarity advocacy.
Review municipal contracts, procurement, investments, sponsorships, and partnerships for connections to companies or institutions complicit in occupation, apartheid, or genocide of Palestinians.
Establish transparent criteria to prevent municipal funds and public resources from supporting institutions directly implicated in human rights violations.
Prohibit public officials from travelling to Israel, and from attending events or meetings associated with, or organized by, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). As well as other lobby groups or institutions that promote, and are apologists for the state of Israel and its ideology of zionism.
Advocate to the federal and provincial governments that the City of Nanaimo goes on record as opposing the apartheid and genocide in occupied Palestine, formally request that those institutions re-examine their complicity, and take tangible steps to end said complicity (such as divesting from israeli-linked financial institutions, and requesting that Canada end diplomatic and economic ties with ‘israel’.)
Support Palestinian-led cultural, educational, and community initiatives in Nanaimo.
Ensure that Palestinian residents and community members have meaningful participation in municipal consultations and decisions concerning Palestine solidarity and anti-racism.
Our goal is not symbolic recognition alone. We seek a Nanaimo that takes practical, transparent, and locally relevant action against genocide, colonialism, and complicity, while standing firmly with Palestinian liberation and the freedom of all peoples.
None of us are free until all of us are free.
Petition by
To:
Municipal Candidates and Council of Nanaimo
From:
[Your Name]
Nanaimo Municipal Action for Palestine (SFPC)
Nanaimo has a long-standing and active community movement for Palestinian liberation. Since October, 2023, people in Nanaimo have organized actions for Palestine every single week, maintaining a consistent public presence in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine.
These actions have brought together community members, students, workers, families, faith communities, Palestinians and allies. The liberation of Palestine is a global struggle for justice, freedom, and self-determination. For generations, Palestinians have endured displacement, occupation, apartheid, racial discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and ongoing violence through a settler-colonial project sustained by international and Canadian political, military, and economic support.
This sustained organizing demonstrates that solidarity with Palestine is not a passing political position in Nanaimo. Our community has shown, week after week, month after month, and year after year, that our citizens are committed to ending the genocide and supporting the liberation of Palestine.
Our candidates will listen to, and work alongside, the people who have been organizing in Nanaimo for years, and will use municipal power to turn that community commitment into meaningful, local action.
Since October 2023, Israel has been actively committing a genocide in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza faced mass killing, forced displacement, man-made starvation, the destruction of homes, hospitals, and schools. Palestinians in the West Bank have faced escalating military violence, settler attacks, land dispossession, and forced displacement. This is part of an ongoing system of occupation and colonization affecting Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948. That system imposes a siege, occupation, settlement expansion on Palestinian lands while denying Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and right of return.
As residents of Nanaimo, we recognize that municipal governments are not separate from global struggles against colonialism, racism, and genocide. Local governments have a responsibility to ensure that public institutions, policies, spending, and public spaces do not contribute to oppression or silence those who speak against it.
Standing against Zionism as a system of colonialism, occupation, and racial domination is not hostility toward Jewish people or Judaism. We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, racism in all forms, and the conflation of Jewish identity with Zionism or with the state of israel.
We understand Palestinian liberation as part of the wider struggle against colonialism and systemic racism, which also includes the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples on whose traditional territories we live and organize. We support Indigenous self-determination, and sovereignty, and recognize that solidarity must be grounded in meaningful relationships, accountability, and action.
Upon election, our candidates will:
Publicly condemn the ongoing genocide, occupation, apartheid, and forced displacement of Palestinians.
Recognize and adopt the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association’s framework on anti-Palestinian racism and refute the politically biased IHRA definition of Jew-hatred (anti-semitism).
Develop a municipal plan to address anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, and the suppression of Palestine solidarity advocacy.
Review municipal contracts, procurement, investments, sponsorships, and partnerships for connections to companies or institutions complicit in occupation, apartheid, or genocide of Palestinians.
Establish transparent criteria to prevent municipal funds and public resources from supporting institutions directly implicated in human rights violations.
Prohibit public officials from travelling to Israel, and from attending events or meetings associated with, or organized by, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). As well as other lobby groups or institutions that promote, and are apologists for the state of Israel and its ideology of zionism.
Advocate to the federal and provincial governments that the City of Nanaimo goes on record as opposing the apartheid and genocide in occupied Palestine, formally request that those institutions re-examine their complicity, and take tangible steps to end said complicity (such as divesting from israeli-linked financial institutions, and requesting that Canada end diplomatic and economic ties with ‘israel’.)
Support Palestinian-led cultural, educational, and community initiatives in Nanaimo.
Ensure that Palestinian residents and community members have meaningful participation in municipal consultations and decisions concerning Palestine solidarity and anti-racism.
Our goal is not symbolic recognition alone. We seek a Nanaimo that takes practical, transparent, and locally relevant action against genocide, colonialism, and complicity, while standing firmly with Palestinian liberation and the freedom of all peoples.
None of us are free until all of us are free.