Authors host literary festival in support of student protestors
The festival comes after an open letter from VIU staff and faculty was sent to the university on May 7th. Photo: Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm
Twenty-two days into the VIU Palestine Solidarity Encampment at Vancouver Island University’s Nanaimo campus, local authors hosted a literary festival to support the student protestors.
On May 22, the Watermelon Seeds Festival of Literature, featured seven novelists, poets, playwrights, and journalists, along with three student scholars to demonstrate solidarity with the student protesters at the encampment. The encampment is located in the quad outside the university’s library.
Warren Heiti, a professor at VIU, is the coordinator of the festival. At the start of the evening, he spoke to the crowd explaining why the encampment started on May 1st. He said he has been able to learn a lot from the students associated with the encampment.
“Some of us have been calling this encampment VIU’s ‘Graduate Center for Social Justice and Civic Engagement,’ and I've been learning a lot by hanging out with these impressive scholars. For over seven months now our undergraduate scholars have been working tirelessly and courageously to facilitate dialogue and to educate the university community,” Heiti said. “They are our university's moral and political leaders.”
Sara Kishawi was one of the student protestors who did a reading during the festival. She shares that as a Palestinian from Gaza, she had to focus her effects here in Nanaimo but also back in Gaza where her family is.
“And the reaction from people as they overlook genocide, and as they choose a more selfish–I'd say pathway is something that makes us lose faith in humanity,” Kishawi said. “So thank you for showing up, and thank you for being here for humanity.”
She said that the encampment’s demands to VIU are the bare minimum.
“We did it at an institution, an academic institution because this is what this is where people learn,” Kishawi said. “This is where the highest level of education happens, and to ask for a statement of ceasefire, to ask for divestment from a genocide and to ask for an investigation of discrimination, incidents on campus. That is the bare minimum that we can ask for.”
She said that those in the encampment have been having conversations, educating themselves, and interacting with the community.
“In terms of being there, maintaining the culture, and even engaging in acts of joy, during these times is a big part of the resistance,” Kishawi said. “For Palestinians, proving that we will still live on having that motivation is a big part of our resistance, and that has been a part of our life since we were born.”
Kishawi said she chose to read from the book Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe to speak on the two-state solution. The two-state solution would see the establishment of an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel. She said for the last seven months members of the Palestinian Student Committee have been reading a lot about the ideas around a one-state solution.
“Because we often quote, that compromise between the oppressor and the oppressed maintains that there's an oppressor and oppressed. You can't have a solution based on a compromise,” Kishawi said. “So we painted that on the Palestinians, and asking Palestinians to compromise, in terms of having a two-state solution after the past 76 years, is simply not the solution, or a permanent, peaceful solution at all.” [sic.]
The seven readings featured Karim Alrawi, Joy Dubé, Sonnet L’Abbé, Robert Pepper-Smith, Jay Ruzesky, Craig Taylor, and Paul Watkins. The readers, many of whom are VIU faculty members, chose readings from their own works and from other books or poems that went along with the mission of the festival.
One of the readers Karim Alrawi read from his children's book Arab Fairy Tale Feats: A Literary Cookbook that tells stories about children from different Arab countries along with recipes for food from the culture.
The festival comes after an open letter from VIU staff and faculty was sent to the university on May 7th. The letter states their concerns about how VIU responded to the start of the encampment. The letter which 105 members of the VIU staff and faculty signed, stated that VIU administration cannot say they are supportive of the students’ right to peaceful protest and freedom of assembly and expression while also threatening extreme measures by the school.
The open letter states the notice sent out by VIU on May 2 to those at the encampment stating they could face suspension, expulsion or be prohibited from graduation and convocation celebrations, undermines “the exercise of those rights through the enforcement of policies and bylaws.”
CHLY obtained the notice given to those students, which was signed by Mark Egan, Manager of Security Facilities Services. In the notice, VIU also stated they have the right to request a peace officer to enforce measures authorized under the Trespassing Act, which could involve student arrests or removal of personal property from VIU premises
In the open letter, it calls for VIU to retract the notice issued to the encampment and commit to not using peace officers, police or private security to intimidate any student protestors or remove the encampment. It also calls on VIU to commit to not implementing any disciplinary actions against students exercising their right to protest.
As of May 23, VIU has not retracted the notice.
At the end of the night, Heiti said he hopes to continue the Watermelon Seeds Festival of Literature and host a bigger and better one next year.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.