Boston
Protesters gathered outside the Roxbury Crossing T-Station near the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center on March 30 to observe Palestinian Land Day in solidarity with Palestinian-led resistance against imperialism worldwide.
Boston’s Roxbury Crossing on Land Day, March 30, 2025.WW photo: Steve Kirschbaum
As Aya, a Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) activist, stressed, this year’s Land Day commemoration comes during a campaign of overtly fascist repression in the U.S. that has intensified along with the ongoing genocide in Palestine. On March 18, Zionist occupation forces violated a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, resuming their assault on Gaza. Since March 18, Zionist terror bombing has killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians. The Pentagon’s bombing in Yemen, launched in support of its Zionist ally, has killed many more.
Aya said: “Let us not forget that on March 30, 1976, Zionist forces had announced plans to seize more Palestinian land in the Galilee. In response Palestinians across historic Palestine rose up in a general strike and in mass demonstrations. Many were martyred and dozens were injured, but a fire was lit amongst them all that has never gone out.
“Land Day reminds us that the struggle is not about borders; it is about belonging and refusing to be uprooted. It is about affirming generation after generation that this land is ours, and we will always return. From 1948 through today, over a million acres of Palestinian land have been stolen, yet from Gaza to the Galilee, from the camps of Lebanon to the mountains of Jenin, our people remain rooted, because the resistance is in the soil.”
In the U.S imperial core, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), emboldened by the overtly fascist Trump Administration, is disappearing hundreds of student activists who have opposed these genocidal atrocities. Last week, masked ICE thugs kidnapped Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University Ph.D. student, as she was coming home from an Iftar dinner in Somerville, Massachusetts. Öztürk remains imprisoned at a concentration camp in Louisiana under threat of imminent deportation.
Speakers, including a Tufts student organizer, demanded the release of Özturk; Columbia student organizer Mahmoud Khalil, kidnapped by ICE on March 8; and the hundreds of other pro-Palestine political prisoners.
To mobilize the community against ICE roundups, which have been terrorizing migrant communities, organizers gave the phone number for a hotline to report local ICE activity: (617) 370-5023.
Speakers vow solidarity
A statement from the North American Indian Center of Boston stressed solidarity with Palestinian liberation and all other Indigenous struggles for Land Back and self determination worldwide.
Mairead Skehan Gillis, a Workers World Party organizer, vowed solidarity with the Axis of Resistance against Zionist and U.S terror. As Skehan Gillis explained, the struggles for Palestinian, LGBTQIA2S+, migrant, people of color and workers’ liberation have a common enemy: the billionaires’ ruling class of the U.S empire that sponsors genocide overseas and austerity and repression in the U.S. core.
Skehan Gillis stated: “We don’t have another choice than to fight back; it’s necessary for our survival. And what they cannot do is crush the determination of millions around the world to resist! … We will stay in the streets and strengthen our movements. Until Palestine is free and we know it will be! Until liberation for all! Until we tear down this empire!”
Skehan Gillis fired up the crowd, who cheered throughout her speech, with the chant:“When Palestine is under attack, what do we do? Act Up! Fight Back!”
Closing the rally, PYM organizer Lea Kayali, co-leader of the Palestinian House of New England, Fawaz Abusharkh and a Northeastern University student activist vowed that fascist repression would only strengthen global resistance. As Abusharkh put it, “Until the liberation of all colonized Indigenous land — from Turtle Island to Palestine!”
To continue the struggle, speakers urged demonstrators to attend a march for Palestinian liberation that will take place in Washington D.C., on April 5.
The Boston Coalition for Palestine organized the March 30 action. Members of the coalition include: the Palestinian House of New England, Palestine Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston South Asian Coalition, Workers World Party Boston, Massachusetts Peace Action, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Workers Party of Massachusetts, and over 40 others.