On May 7, around 40 University of Massachusetts Amherst students, faculty and community members gathered on the South Lawn for a memorial from 12-7 p.m. and vigil at 6:30 p.m. to mourn those who have died in Gaza.
The event was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) and UMass Graduate Employee Organization-Palestine Solidarity Caucus (GEO-PSC) and announced over their Instagrams.
The vigil and memorial occurred one year after May 7, 2024, when over 130 people were arrested, including around 70 UMass students and six Amherst faculty members, following the second encampment during the Gaza solidarity protest.
“It’s important for us as a community to come together and grieve from time to time,” Fareen Parvez, an associate professor of sociology and member of FJP, said. “We need to keep gathering like this to remind our community and our university that the genocide is still happening.”
Kivlighan Finch de Montebello, a sophomore Social Thought and Political Economy and Sustainable Community Development major, read aloud a reconstructed version of the land agreement.
In the land agreement, Finch de Montebello connected the displacement of native people to the current displacement of Palestinian people from their homes.
“To stand for land back for Palestinians means to stand for land back everywhere. To stand against settler colonialism in Palestine means to reckon with many of our own roles as settlers here,” Finch de Montebello said.
As of May 1, at least 1.9 million people in Gaza have been displaced during the war, sometimes repeatedly, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA).
“This repression has failed to silence us, has failed to keep us from acting in solidarity with the people of Palestine,” an SJP member said.
The SJP member continued, saying, “the human cost of American-backed Zionist imperialism is a horror that defies description … tonight is the time to mourn. Now is the time to feel the full weight of the horrors against you if you’re acting. Now is the time to honor our martyrs.”
Testimonies of families living in Gaza were read aloud by Parvez while another speaker read poems, including ‘Something About Living’ by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, ‘I Grant You Refuge’ by Hiba Abu Nada and ‘For the Dead Among Us’ by Lisa Suhair Majaj.
During the vigil, papers with martyrs’ families, faces and blurbs of information were passed around. While around 300 papers were printed, only around 40 were read aloud. Attendees were then encouraged to swap their papers for flowers from the altar, speak words into those flowers and give them to someone else to promote hope.
“I hope that you are able to fully feel the weight of our current moment and you’re able to take some time to process,” The SJP member said. “And I hope that tonight gives you the strength to fight [for] the humanity and the dignity of the oppressed.”
“I do pray for the living and for those who have been martyred,” Parvez said. “I pray for those buried under the rubble. For those who have lost their limbs, who have lost their homes. I pray for courage for those who resist the illegal occupation, [the] horrifying and shameful escalation.”
Kalina Kornacki can be reached at [email protected] or followed on Twitter @KalinaKornacki.
