It has come to our attention that there are those of us in our community who have taken 

exception to the anti-Zionist clause in our List of Demands. Those folks have speculated and/or 
accused the Black Student Union (BSU) of being anti-semitic. 
Firstly, The List of Demands was authored by a collective of students called The 
Drylongso Collective, as indicated in the List of Demands. That list was not offered by the BSU. 
In addition, members of the Collective that authored this statement are Jewish; some of them are 
both Black and Jewish. To insinuate or assume that one cannot be both a Person of Color and 
Jewish is highly problematic. ​This assumption speaks to an inherently racist position further 
illuminating the need for our community to take Ethnic Studies courses​. (See initial list of 
demands) 
To conflate Zionism with Judaism is also highly problematic. Not all Zionists are Jewish 
and not all Jewish folks are Zionists. Our understanding of the distinction between Judaism and 
Zionism comes from the works cited below, including Jews Against Zionism (an international 
organization devoted to anti-Zionist work), ​Noura Erakat (a Palestinian American human rights 
attorney, legal scholar, and professor, currently residing at George Mason University), and 
Angela Davis (if you don’t know who she is, smh. Again see the initial list of demands). That we 
chose to use these definitions by these scholars and organizations negates any insinuation that as 
a Collective we are in any way Anti-Semitic or Anti-Jewish. We encourage everyone, Jewish or 
not, to educate themselves on this very important distinction before lashing out with accusations 
or assumptions about where we stand. 
Black folks and other People of Color have a long-standing history of standing in 
solidarity with Palestinian folks. The quotidian experiences of Palestinians include a long history 
of dealing with violence, colonization (particularly through land dispossession), and oppression. 
We cannot in good conscience advocate for our own liberation without being mindful of the 
current and historical liberation struggles of others locally, nationally, and globally. Particularly 
given the Palestinian students who have struggled alongside marginalized students in previous 
Cal Poly student movements such as SLO Solidarity, it would be disingenuous for us to bring 
attention to our own liberation struggles at the cost of theirs. 
The Collective is a student group that is committed to identifying and eliminating 
structural inequality within our campus community. At this particular moment, we are 
galvanized by a shared outrage to anti-Black and anti-Brown racism at Cal Poly. To attempt to 
decenter Blackness from our discussion by focusing on an accusation of anti-Semitism based on 
a false equivalency of Zionism and Judaism is deeply disturbing and speaks of not only the lack 
of accountability for anti-Semitic acts committed by non-Black/Brown students but also of the 
coalition work that remains to be done. Members of the Collective have, and will continue to, 
fight injustice whenever and wherever it occurs in our community. For now, our focus is on the 
administration’s response to the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity’s actions. We invite any members 
of the campus community who share our goals to join us. 
   
Receipts:   
 
Davis, Angela Y., and Frank Barat. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the 
Foundation of a Movement. 2016. 
 
Erakat, Noura, Whiteness as Property in Israel: Revival, Rehabilitation, and Removal (July 5, 
2015). Harvard Journal on Racial & Ethnic Justice, 2015, Forthcoming.  
 
Issacs, Anna. “How The Black Lives Matter and Palestinian Movements Converged.” Moment 
Magazine - The Next 5,000 Years of Conversation Begin Here, 9 May 2017, 
www.momentmag.com/22800-2/​. 
 
Mason, Patrick L., and Gale Group. Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. 2nd ed., Macmillan 
Reference USA, 2013. 
 
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056 
 
https://www.nkusa.org/activities/speeches/pdf%20speeches/Ahron_Cohen-2.pdf  
 
http://www.nkusa.org/books/pamphlets/pamphlet_4.pdf  
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTub4dViSZw