CTDSA International Affairs Working group organizers standing behind a table for a photo showing fists raised in solidarity

Palestine Organizing in Connecticut: Reflecting on Ceasefire Resolutions

This past September, Connecticut DSA convened to reflect on efforts, in the past year, to pass municipal ceasefire resolutions across the state. The reflection panel focused specifically on the experience of organizers in four towns: New Britain, Hartford, New Haven, and Hamden. These case studies provide valuable lessons for future movement building within Connecticut that can serve to strengthen community power and build enduring infrastructure for not only the rapidly growing movement for Palestinian liberation, but the many interconnected struggles against state and corporate power across our communities. 

The efforts first provide specific insight into how the path toward a broader goal, such as a ceasefire resolution, can be tailored to achieve more local secondary goals. Residents in each town faced unique obstacles and circumstances and, as a result, their ceasefire initiatives were built with differing objectives in mind:  

  • New Britain: Leaders of the New Britain campaign came together with three specific goals: 1) pushing Congresswoman Jahana Hayes, for whom New Britain is a critical voting bloc, to speak out on the genocide in Gaza and in support of a ceasefire, 2) cultivate a local constituency in support of Palestine, and 3) perform a structure test to analyze how much power the Left could wield within New Britain’s Democratic Town Committee. 
  • Hartford: The political landscape in Hartford presented many challenges; the council is run by the Democratic Town Committee and political participation by residents is very low. While organizers hoped to get a resolution passed, they understood they faced unfavorable odds and saw the moment as an opportunity to identify and create a list of people that could be mobilized on other issues as well as identify key power holders that had sway over the city council. Organizers were less concerned with the language of the resolution and more interested in 1) flooding city council with a demanding presence that would expose who Hartford’s representative’s truly valued 2) illuminate how the U.S. participation in the Palestinian Genocide is directly connected to local issues concerning the city’s residents, such as the housing crisis and poor education funding, and 3) rebuild Hartford’s organizing structure. 
  • New Haven: Organizers assembled nonprofits, teachers, and students to propose a resolution to the Board of Alders. Though there is a history of friction between New Haven residents and Yale students, many people were willing to coalesce around the resolution efforts to create something that would “rock the boat”. However, disagreements over broader goals and the influence of opposing parties with insider knowledge within the Board of Alders complicated their efforts.
  • Hamden: With three DSA-endorsed councilors on its city council, the campaign aimed to push bold language, resist unnecessary compromises, and demonstrate what it means to have socialists in office. Leaders capitalized on residents’ inquiries about resolutions passed in other towns such as Bridgeport and saw an opportunity to promote socialist politics through an educational and political campaign. City councilor Abdul-Osmanu specifically aimed to draft and pass something with clear, strong language that did not fall into empty diluted rhetoric. He wanted to demonstrate that heavily compromising on language was not the only way to get something like this done. 

Each town’s varied outcomes offered critical insights:

  • New Britain: Members in New Britain found the Ceasefire initiative to be an effective way to connect with the local mosque, the Islamic Association of Central Connecticut (or Masjid al Taqwa), and bring the Muslim community into broader political organizing. The movement around a ceasefire resolution was undoubtedly an influential factor in the creation of a local DSA branch in New Britain. New Britain organizers expressed that though many people were reached out to and a broader base for organizing around an array of political issues was formed, it is still unclear if an actual “structure” was formed. Organizers suggested that the more sanitized language of the final resolution, after interference from local politicians, resulted from conceding to individuals with different goals and possibly could have been avoided if there was more cohesiveness on goals and theories of change. 
  • Hartford: Organizers faced significant obstacles, specifically from the Hartford Jewish Federation. The Federation turned out many speakers against the resolution, almost all from West Hartford and surrounding suburban areas. The publicity they brought fueled rallies against the passage of the resolution. Council members met with Federation members while refusing to meet with pro-ceasefire organizers. Organizers found that going public about the ceasefire effort early on allowed the opposing Federation to rapidly and successfully organize against the movement. Organizers also noted the importance of clearly communicating the potential obstacles participants would likely face, in order to better prepare them for opposition and to boost morale around achievement of secondary goals, such as creating power maps and linking local and international struggles. In one clear win, one Hartford resident, at a later rally to increase funding for Hartford public schools, identified that there was no reason for education funding to be cut when we have state and local taxes going toward subsidizing local weapons companies.
  • New Haven: Due to general disagreement on broader goals, there was often paralysis on how to move forward. The Jewish Federation played a large role in combating the effort here too, as a member Board of Alders was directly involved in the Jewish Federation and was therefore able to keep them informed on the coalition’s actions. There were many efforts to divide the coalition and delay a hearing on the resolution; it took five months for a hearing to be held where the resolution was ultimately read and filed away. Importantly however, the coalition building for the ceasefire resolution allowed for there to be existing momentum and existing infrastructures of communication and support when the student encampment movement erupted. 
  • Hamden: Although many wanted to copy and paste the language of the recently-passed Bridgeport resolution, the largely organic push from Hamden residents created an opportunity to craft a local document with potentially stronger language. “Language matters,” Osmanu stated, “If we were going to get this passed, I didn’t want it to be meaningless.” This was an opportunity to push ideas and language that had been dubbed as fringe, such as merely using the word genocide, into the mainstream. “They wouldn’t be able to call it radical either. It represented the questions of antizionist Jews, of the Muslim community, even of suburban white women; it represented the community. How is that radical?” Hamden passed a resolution using uncompromising language that included the word Genocide, and rejected the obligation to condemn Palestinian resistance. This victory energized the local socialist base and engaged student activists. 

Looking forward 

Coming together to reflect on each town’s experiences allows for identifying important patterns and lessons: 

  1. Politicization is vital. Beyond the immediate goal of passing resolutions, these efforts built infrastructure and cultivated new leadership. By connecting disparate groups—Muslim communities, student activists, and elected allies—organizers broadened the base for future actions.
  2. Language matters. Strong, clear language can shift what is deemed acceptable and introduce “fringe” ideas into mainstream discourse. As Hamden’s Abdul Osmanu noted, rhetoric that reflects community values and avoids compromise is met with excitement and promotes engagement.
  3. Transparency with participants. Transparency from experienced organizers about the expected obstacles and probabilities of success can be empowering rather than demoralizing.  When the uphill nature of our goals is made clear, participants can better recognize the broader value of their efforts, such as insights into power structures and base-building, and hold on to these takeaways even in the face of loss. 
  4. Identifying opposition. Opposition from groups like the Hartford Jewish Federation and opposing city council members illuminated the power structures we must navigate. The resolution efforts provided critical lessons in facing well-resourced and well-connected opposition.
Palestine Organizing in Connecticut: Reflecting on Ceasefire Resolutions | Connecticut DSA | This past September, Connecticut DSA convened to reflect on efforts, in the past year, to pass municipal ceasefire resolutions across the state. The reflection panel focused specifically on the experience of organizers in four towns: New Britain, Hartford, New Haven, and Hamden. These case studies provide valuable lessons for future movement building within Connecticut that can serve to strengthen community power and build enduring infrastructure for not only the rapidly growing movement for Palestinian liberation, but the many interconnected struggles against state and corporate power across our communities. 

What we have witnessed this past year is, for many of us, one of the most rapid shifts in public perception, education, and mobilization around a previously taboo political crisis in recent memory. People across the globe have engaged in unending rallies, economic and cultural boycotts, strikes, encampments, militancy against weapons manufacturers, legislative and legal battles, and countless other tactics to push back against the U.S. and Israeli war machines. The rapid changes within the movement over this past year underscore the need for sustained, reflective organizing. It’s essential to ask not only how to achieve a goal but why it is important. Municipal resolutions may not directly challenge imperial power, but they build the infrastructure for a movement capable of responding organically and powerfully to future crises. And in a rapidly growing movement such as this one, these opportunities for base building should be taken advantage of. We have always known that a ceasefire alone would not free Palestinians and all those subjected to the decades-long violence of Zionism. But as conditions evolve and moments for more direct agitation present themselves, the lessons of these ceasefire campaigns play a role in preparing us to meet much larger moments in bringing down the Zionist entity.

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