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Cable Live x Bristol Transformed – can Apartheid-Free Zones help liberate Palestine?

The panel asks what was the St Paul’s Apartheid-Free Zone – and how can it be a model in today’s fight for Palestinian freedom?

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This is the third in a series of talks recorded at the Bristol Transformed 2024, a grassroots festival of radical politics, arts and culture for which The Bristol Cable was a media partner. Throughout this series, you’ll hear from a range of voices, including Cable journalists, talking on topics with a focus on political organising.

In this event, we hear from Stop the War coalition members Lujane Hamzah and Sharifah Rahman alongside trade union organiser Matthew Hollinshead and journalist Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins in a talk about their campaign to set up apartheid-free zones in Bristol in response to the ongoing conflict in Palestine.

In St Paul’s during the 1980s, there was a campaign against Apartheid South Africa, including a boycott on goods from South Africa in local shops. So what can be learnt from this historical example of local resistance against a foreign state?

The panel was recorded on 19th of May and, since then: the campaign held its first official meeting and has been campaigning door to door.

Since the panel, Sharifah Rahman was deselected from running for Plaid Cymru in the general election over allegations of anti-semitism after the Telegraph reported she had liked a series of controversial tweets about the conflict.

And Thangam Debbonaire, the long standing MP for Bristol Central (formerly Bristol West), said she thought the Labour party’s stance on Gaza played a role in her losing her seat at the general election.

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