BALTIMORE — On the fence of the Billings building hangs a Palestinian flag, and posters highlighting the tragedy that is the Israel-Hamas War.
Monday night, some students on campus came together to honor the thousands of Palestinians who have died since the start of the war one year ago.
Johns Hopkins Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine led the vigil hoping to provide a safe space for students who support Palestine to come together.
“There aren’t many spaces for Palestinian students, for Arab students, for Muslim students, for sympathetic students, to come together and support Palestine. There just aren’t spaces on campus. It's difficult to find a way to come together in a safe and comforting way," says Grace.
Grace says it is important for people to have a place to show their support on a college campus especially when many students are away from family.
“A way for people to physically come together in person and like find connection with people who understand their feelings who understand how much pain they have seen and felt.”
During the vigil students read several names of Palestinians they know have died in the war, although they didn’t have a name for all, they listed as many as they could.
“The death toll currently, some numbers say 40,000, some numbers go up as high as 180,000, and that just shows how dire the situation is right now over in Gaza and how just ignored and almost villainized people have been over the past year," she says.
Grace says reading the names was the most important part of the vigil.
She says it is easy for people to forget that each number is a person, a mother, a father, a son, or a daughter.
“It's really important to mark today as a way to grieve. A way for students to come together and grieve and honor these martyrs and make sure that they aren’t forgotten and that they aren’t just reduced to a statistic," says Grace.
She says she hopes people don’t forget about how many lives have been lost in the conflict and as the war continues, the list of names gets longer.
The Johns Hopkins Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine stands in solidarity with the Hopkins Justice Collective which aims to get the university to divest in Israel.
