“Bassem was one of us,” said US Representative and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri. Speaking on the House floor in May 2021 during Israel’s latest all-out assault on Palestinians, Bush honored the memory of Bassem Masri, who died in November 2018 at age thirty-one. Masri was a local resident and Palestinian American who was on the front lines of the protests that engulfed the ghettoized St Louis suburb of Ferguson after Michael Brown’s murder by local police.

“As a Palestinian,” Bush went on, Masri “was ready to resist, to rebel, to rise up with us,” to fight for “an end to the militarized police occupations of our communities.” This speech was embedded in an official tweet, clearly stating a position that has become axiomatic on the US left: the fight for black lives and the fight for Palestinian liberation are interconnected.

In May 2021, the Washington Post declared that Black Lives Matter (BLM) “changed the US debate” on Palestine, reporting on official declarations of solidarity from BLM activists and leaders as well as a ten-day trip to the Palestinian territories and Israel by BLM leaders. Many on the Left know of the long history of black and Third-Worldist internationalism that such statements from prominent black movement leaders, intellectuals, and activists today are a part of. Black American solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination is blossoming.