Apartheid-Free Communities | Allison Tanner

Aug 1 2024 • 25 mins

The Rev. Dr. Allison J. Tanner is a pastor, educator and organizer working for justice and healing in her community. She is the Stephen McNeil Fellow at AFSC, where she organizes the Apartheid-Free Communities platform. She is also the Pastor of Public Witness at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church in Oakland, California. [https://afsc.org/profile/allison-tanner]

"The Apartheid-Free network is a coalition of communities who pledge to work together to end Israeli apartheid. This coalition formed in 2022, following the emerging consensus among the international human rights community that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people amounts to the Crime of Apartheid. Originally created by faith groups in North America, the network currently includes congregations, faith communities, solidarity organizations, non-profits, campus groups, businesses, and more. Centered in North America, we encourage communities throughout the world to join the network.

The Apartheid-Free network asks ourselves and our communities to take a renewed public pledge against all forms of racism, bigotry, and oppression, including against racist discrimination, islamophobia, antisemitism, and xenophobia in our own communities. We seek to educate ourselves and our communities about the devastation of Palestinian lives under military occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid, and about the connections between settler colonialism, racist oppression, and the cult of security in Palestine/Israel, in North America, and throughout the world. Inspired by the anti-Apartheid movement that toppled the Apartheid regime in South Africa, we are building a new anti-apartheid movement and encourage faith communities and all communities of conscience to step away from any and all support to Israeli apartheid, occupation, and settler colonialism.

This coalition is convened by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and has a steering committee that consists of organizations and individuals that includes:

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Alliance of Baptists Black Christians for Palestine (BC4P) Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) Episcopal Peace Fellowship – Palestine Israel Network (EPF PIN) Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (IPMN) Mennonite Palestine Israel Network (MennoPIN) Quaker Palestine Israel Network (QPIN) United Church of Christ (UCC) United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR) Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME)