(This email was sent to the board of the Rietveld Academie on december 11th 2023 on behalf of a group of students who mobilized for the Palestinian liberation. We share it with everybody to keep the dialogue transparent. At the bottom of this email you can find an online signature system. Please sign if you feel represented by these words and want to give weight to the statement. If you are interested in joining the mobilization please come to our weekly assemblies and follow us on Instagram @gra.si.students4palestine)

Hi.

We are a group of students from both the Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Institute. We are mobilising ourselves because of the obvious need for solidarity with the colonial war in Palestine, and of the inaction that characterizes the school's reaction to it. We gather at 5 pm every Tuesday in self-organized general assemblies, where we are not silenced and where we can grieve, design actions and educate each other on the genocide happening.

Over two months have passed since the 7th of October. More than 15 000 lives have been lost since. We stand with all the civilian victims of the genocide, and we stand with the Palestinian liberation, and the right of Palestinian people to live freely.

We are watching the horrors of colonial war from the safety of our colonial state, and we rage. We rage because of the inaction and the double standards we see unfolding in the Western world. We believe that any person who regards other humans with solidarity and humanity can see the injustice and should not let their clarity of mind be poisoned. We rage while watching the war crimes committed with impunity, partly funded by the governing of the country we reside in. A government this school depends on, but also one it has publicly spoken out about before in a negative way. This school that claims to be an anti-colonial institution. But also an institution that has remained almost silent through the past 8 weeks.

We are watching the horrors of colonial war from the safety of our colonial state, and we grieve. We grieve the loss of so many lives. And we grieve for the lives still being lived under a colonial regime. We grieve with our co-students, who are directly connected to the atrocities that unfold in Gaza. We want to be able to properly grieve together, and acknowledge the situation with flags, spaces both physical and timewise, and no silencing of any voices or ways of grieving.

We are watching the horrors of colonial war from the safety of our colonial state, and we take action. We mobilize ourselves against the silencing of Muslim and Arab voices, in general under the false pretence that their voices are being appropriated by terrorism. We mobilize ourselves against increasing islamophobia and antisemitism in Europe. We urge you to join hands in mobilizing ourselves against colonialism.

Rage with us, grieve with us, mobilize with us.

In the following paragraphs, you will be reading our feelings, our reactions, and our proposals.

We want a school where problems are not hushed up, where there are structures in place to take care of all students in times of crises.

We see double standards apply between the handling of the Palestinian crisis today, and how the academy has handled others in the past.

Jewish, Israeli, Arab and Palestinian voices are being silenced when they speak out against the Israeli settler government by the schools deferential treatment. There are borders being drawn where there weren't before.

This institution positions itself within the global context as being concerned with issues of inequality and anti-colonialism. These claims have in the recent time been disregarded by the new board through refusing to make a statement. This silence upholds violence, occupation and genocide.

The IDF has been targeting schools, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, churches, houses and journalists, and even shot at people during the temporary ceasefire between 24/11 and 30/11.

Staying silent, in the urgency of a genocide, is in itself a very strong statement of siding with the oppressor. The contrast in how the academy reacted to the war crimes committed by Russia highlights the double-standard of its reaction. The school board now argues that they are primarily interested in their new vision of a long term sustainability brought about by neutrality on world-conflicts. The survival of the institution on a long term indeed necessitates to side with the big white capital. We recognize that siding with liberation and freedom poses a risk for the school, yet we can't let that be an excuse for standing with injustice.

We have been told that making a statement closes dialogue. We want to ask: what kind of dialogue exists in a space where discussions and debates are not allowed?

In your communication appears “[enable] conversations and discussions to take place in a respectful and productive way”, but the first -and so far- only solidarity workshop for Palestine had this requirement: “Please note, that this is not a space for discussion or debate.” We urge you to let us talk, to give space to discomfort, to let us be angry and to let us grieve.

In this line of questioning, we are also wondering why the staff statement supporting the Palestinian cause was not published or shared by email to the whole school? We have also seen the space dedicated to posters, a.k.a the space for public expression, considerably shrinking in response to students using that space to show solidarity to Palestine specifically. We want to invite the board to rethink their vision of safety and dialogue, notions that we do not access through silencing opinions, not taking stances, repressing public expressions and targeting activists. We feel the school has now only been safe for those who don't want to 'take a stand' or speak up.

We ask the school to distinguish the notions of discomfort and unsafety. We would like to emphasize that debating and feeling uncomfortable is necessary in the process towards feeling safe(r); as writer, musician and activist Adrienne Maree Brown states, discomfort is essential to create real change.

As students of the Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut, these are our demands:

We urge you to read us, hear us, grieve with us, and react to the unfolding genocide.

Free Palestine.

Relevant links to understand the current urgency :

aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas...

nytimes.com/2023/11/25/world/middleeast/israel-gaz...

ccrjustice.org/genocide-palestinian-people-interna...

https://wearenotnumbers.org/#wannreports

aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/15/lawyers-for-gaza-vic...

Please sign the letter to support our request for solidarity.