Youth on the Frontlines

The student front has long been the pulse of our movement. Our students and their uprisings to confront US hegemony and imperialism, both in the imperial core and elsewhere, are often used as the gauge of the health of our movement as a whole. This rock, the first out of the slingshot, represents the importance and the history of the student front and student movement, as students have fought for justice over many years. 

Those who have played integral roles to the student movements throughout time in the Bay Area and in Palestine form a defensive position around the encampment - like we had seen throughout the most recent outburst of student protests, coined the Student Indifada. From left to right Dr. Lanada War Jack, Layan Kayed, George Murray, Refaat Glareer, Ghaid Hiijaz, and Richard Oaks stand strong and linked.

Behind this line of defense sits a scene of an encampment, like the multitudes we saw crop up around the world in response to the ongoing genocide in the spring of 2024. It includes an unraveling banner of the core demands students often listed out, regular prayers, the banner unfurled at the momentous “Hind’s Hall,” and a student studying the Qur’an alongside a stack of revolutionary books - each a nod of their own: Trinity of Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedi, 

500 years of Chicano Women’s History by Elizabeth Martinez, Blood in my Eye by George Jackson, Men in the sun by Ghassan Kanafani, Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (one of the 99 books found in George Jackson’s prison cell), This Bridge Called my Back edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Prison Diary by Ho Chi Minh (one of the 99 books found in George Jackson’s prison cell), and Gaza Writes Back by Refaat Alareer. 

In the top right of the scene a phone is held with a photo of a child in Gaza, Rafah specifically, holding a sign thanking students in american universities for their solidarity. This is to show the interface between the students in the imperial core and the people of Palestine and the power that is held in those lines of communication. We too are speaking to the people of Palestine in this piece and in this mural as a whole.  

Finally, the scene of the encampment extends to the sun rising on the infamous landscape of a liberated Jerusalem with the holy Al Aqsa Mosque in sight. This signifies the hope we see in our people and the belief we, and in particular our students, are destined for victory in our struggle.