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 sadistic military forces in the world, refusing to back down.”  And he insisted that the struggle for a Free Palestine was integrally connected to global liberation. “To fight for a free Palestine is to fight for a free Haiti, a free Congo, a free Sudan – a free and just world which will be molded by all of us!”

The keynote plenary of the conference, titled Gaza is the Center of the World, featured Palestinian leaders engaged in key arenas of struggle: journalism, the university, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and medical missions. Each of the speakers tributed the ways in which Gaza provides orientation and clarity. They spoke through the lens of their own experiences in the struggle offering examples of courage and steadfastness.

Journalist Abu Baker Abed left Gaza four months ago after many of his family members had been killed and his life was constantly at risk as a journalist dedicated to reporting the truth. Unable to attend the conference in person due to the denial of his visa, Abed began by honoring Anas al-Sharif. He spoke about the extreme struggles that journalists face in doing their job in Gaza – never resting, working in tents, being reporters at the same time as being mourners at the funerals of their family members.  He spoke of watching his cousin be killed before his eyes and immediately afterwards reporting about the death on live TV. He was told by his employer that he could only keep reporting if he stopped praising the resistance, but he refused to do this. “Everyone in Gaza is a resistance fighter in their own way” he declared. 

Dr. Hatem Bazian, Professor at UC Berkeley, founder of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, spoke passionately about the need to center Gaza in the university regardless of the many pressures to erase it as a subject.  Despite the fact that Dr. Bazian is facing seven lawsuits and a Senate investigation for his work on behalf of Palestine, he insisted that “Gaza is the intellectual mirror for higher education,” and that Gaza should be the focal point on campuses across the country. “My campus is Gaza.  Encampments are Gaza. The library is Gaza, the research is Gaza. And we need to connect it to every part of the struggle!”  He concluded with a vehement charge for students, “The time is today to Free Palestine. The time is today to liberate the university. The time is today for decolonization. Students have transformed history! Go out today and transform history!”

Student activist Mahmoud Khalil explained how he became a target of the Trump administration in March 2025 for his leading role in the student encampments at Columbia.  He was arrested and unjustly held in a Louisiana detention center for over three months, missing the birth of his first child.  As a green card holder with no criminal record, the only reason for the continuing deportation proceedings against him is punishment for his political activities in support of Palestine. “Gaza is the Compass can’t just be a slogan…We get our hope, we get our persistence from the people of Gaza…The fact that I was targeted by the highest officials and levels in this country means that we are winning. We are succeeding in shifting the mainstream!”

Huwaida Arraf helped start the Free Gaza flotillas which have been trying to break the long term siege on Gaza since 2008.  She was on a boat in 2008 that successfully reached Gaza and she described the beautiful reception they received from the people of Gaza when they entered its port. She was also on the Mavi Marmara in 2010 where nine people were brutally killed and thirty wounded by Israeli forces when they violently boarded the ship. Most recently Huwaida was with the Handala flotilla which was intercepted in July 2025 by Israel in international waters. As she spoke, the Global Sumud Flotilla was getting ready to take off from ports around the world in another effort to break the siege (note: on 9/8 a Zionist drone struck the flotilla in Tunisia.)  Huwaida summed up the critical significance of the fight for Gaza: “Gaza is our compass because it points us to the truth…When we’re fighting for Gaza we’re fighting for a world where no people live in cages or under siege, under the boot of militarism or of fascism. From every river to every sea all people must be free!”

Dr. Mohammed Mustafa who has been on several medical missions to Gaza explained that “the compass points in one direction no matter who you are or where you are. In this way it provides a mandate and direction towards freedom for everyone. What is happening in Gaza makes the world look even if they try to ignore it.” He went on to say that, “Gaza is the only place on earth where nourishing a baby is an act of resistance. It is the only place where life itself is viewed as a weapon of war.” He told the story of a young girl of nine years old who, after their house was bombed and all her family was killed, walked many kilometers with her two year old brother to find the hospital. Despite being surrounded by enemy fire and drones she chose to keep walking forward to save her brother’s life. “This is Gaza.  This is the people of Gaza. They can’t break the spirit of Gaza. “ 

Lameess Mehana of PYM concluded the panel.  She explained that PYM was started during the 2009 war on Gaza and since then Gaza has always been a central force orienting their work. She noted that despite all the actions of activists and strugglers around the world, the genocide has continued because of the current global imperialist system and its determination to “do anything to stop the march towards truth and transformation of the world order. They fear a reality where Gaza is world-altering because it is.  The movement for Palestinian liberation is the movement of our lifetime- a charge for all those who are willing to take it.”

One of the key ways in which U.S. imperialism and Zionism have worked to prevent political transformation has been the imprisonment of people who resist. Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the most well known political prisoners held in U.S. prisons. Mumia’s deep voice reverberated throughout Anas al-Sharif hall in a recorded message sent from Mahanoy prison in Pennsylvania where he is incarcerated. Mumia decried the mass slaughter happening in Gaza, he praised Mahmoud Khalil’s courage for protesting the genocide, and he condemned the Zionists for turning all of Palestine into an open air prison. He concluded “The struggle must continue, and it will, as long as hearts beats around the world, as long as eyes see around the world, and as long as we love that which we call human.” 

Imam Omar Suleiman, the Founder and President of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, highlighted the many cases of Palestinians unjustly imprisoned in the United States. He spoke about the case of the Holy Land Five who were wrongly  convicted of supporting “terrorism”  in 2008 in the wake of the escalated Islamophobia generated by 9/11. Two of the Five still remain in federal prison. Another currently imprisoned Palestinian is Leqaa Kordia, a student at Columbia who had been part of the campus protests in solidarity with Gaza. She had let her visa lapse and without any due process was arrested by ICE and sent thousands of miles from her home in Paterson New Jersey to be held in Prairie Land Detention Center in Texas. An immigration judge has granted her bond twice while she’s awaiting a hearing, but DHS denied her release while they are appealing the judge’s decision.  These cases of repression are meant to stoke fear and silence the movement in the U.S. 

In the panel, The Palestinian Struggle Behind Bars, the speakers spoke virtually from Palestine about the ways in which the Zionist state has greatly accelerated the use of imprisonment as a strategy of repression over the past twenty-two months. The number of Palestinian political prisoners has risen to 10,800, the largest number ever.  Hossam Shaheen, who was released in February 2025 after twenty-one years in prison as part of one of the negotiated prisoner exchanges, spoke of the torturous and deteriorating conditions that exist inside.  He described the weaponization of skin diseases like scabies which are being left untreated to spread infection and debilitate the prison population.  He explained that it is freedom of thought that enable the prisoners to maintain their steadfastness in the struggle for liberation.

Arab Barghouti, is the son of one of the most prominent and well-loved Palestinian political prisoners, Marwan Barghouti, who has been in prison since 2002. Arab spoke of the suffering of the tens of thousands of Palestinian family members who have not been able to visit their loved ones due to the elimination of family visiting since October 2023. After October 7^th, his father was placed in solitary confinement to break his spirit and keep him from encouraging and educating the younger prisoners. As a result of solitary and beatings which dislocated his shoulder, Marwan Barghouti’s medical condition has severely deteriorated. Arab expressed his tremendous pride not only in his father but also in his mother, Fadwa Barghouti who began campaigning for his father’s freedom as soon as he was first convicted. In 2013, she launched the International Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Prisoners from Nelson Mandela’s former cell on Robben Island.

Palestinian journalist Lama Ghosheh was arrested in 2022 in front of her two young children and falsely charged with incitement to violence on social media.  In prison she faced harassment, interrogation and frequent strip searches.  She spoke emotionally about the pain and resilience of the other women in prison who endure increasing physical assault, humiliation and solitary confinement meant to create loneliness and despair.  “Israel exploits motherhood to weaken and cajole women into capitulation since it knows the importance of loss of family for Palestinian women.” She pointed out that “Prison doesn’t end with the completion of a sentence. Freedom remains fragmented and conditional afterwards.” She herself had to do a year of house arrest after being released which was then followed by mandatory community service in the laundry room of an Israeli settlement. Despite all this and the threats she continually receives, she remains strong in her belief that these sacrifices are necessary to achieve Palestinian freedom.

The many other speakers at the conference demonstrated the growing breadth of the movement for Gaza and Palestine.  Elected leaders including Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib and Richmond, CA Mayor Eduardo Martinez, prominent activists such as Linda Sarsour and Chris Smalls and political influencer Hasan Piker each brought their own perspective on how Gaza is central to the world situation.  Anti-imperialist activists from other struggles were visibly present, including a strong representation by Cuba solidarity activists which I was part of.  Performances by the Wishah Popular Dance Troupe, the Baladi Dance group, and the Palestinian Youth Ensemble offered beautiful inspiration to all of us there.

Multiple complementary tactics for increasing the effectiveness of the movement were discussed including, direct action to halt US weapons transfers to Israel, intensifying pressure on the Democratic Party ahead of midterm elections, and connecting the struggle for Gaza to the activism against fascism in the U.S. There were breakout sessions on genocide documentation, cultural and artistic empowerment, contesting Zionist forces, healthcare solidarity, food sovereignty and international legal action.  The building of a grassroots peoples arms embargo campaign was highlighted as a priority with particular attention given to the recent report by PYM on the key role of the Oakland, CA airport in shipping military cargo to Israel.

The conference did not offer easy answers or formulas for the struggle. Rather, it was the convergence of energy, ideas and collective commitment anchored by the leadership of a young generation of Palestinians within a cohort of strong organizations that fortified us for the battles ahead.

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