dear friends,

As this is published, we are witnessing Israel’s genocidal violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as increased pressure on Palestinians in the West Bank.

I am heart-broken, enraged, and tired. But not broken. I know you too are cycling through your own feelings of grief, despair, abandonment, and more.

In moments like this, we need each other. We need the solidarity and grassroots power our community has built over the past 23 years. And we need many, many more of us to stand up against genocide and apartheid.

It’s clear that USCPR was built for moments like this, and we’re going to need each and every one of you to do everything you can to help us end U.S. support for Israel for good. Read on for more on what your support has allowed us to build, and how we plan to grow our movement for Palestinian rights in the months ahead.

Together we can achieve the liberation Palestinians are fighting for.

Onward,

As this is published in late November 2023, the death and destruction in Gaza is unfathomable for most of us.  Instead of holding Israel accountable, our U.S. government has been fanning the flames of genocide, supplying the weapons and rubber-stamping the killing.

Alongside our partners and allies, we are all out for Gaza right now, pressuring elected officials to call for an immediate ceasefire while also continuing to build for an eventual end to all U.S. military funding of Israel. Your generous support has helped us mobilize hundreds of thousands to take action, demand more from elected officials, and stop business as usual. 

In the past two months, you’ve helped:

• Send nearly 1 million emails and complete 150,000 calls to Members of Congress in every district to demand a ceasefire

• Participate in two large national mobilizations and marches in Washington, DC that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets for Palestine

• Host weekly virtual phone jams and power hours to gather in community, take action, and share resources with thousands of activists.

• Hold sit-ins, demonstrations, and civil disobedience at elected official’s offices to publicly pressure them on Capitol Hill and across the entire country

• Amplify Palestinian voices across social and traditional media

• Create resources to call and email Congress, organize locally, leads demonstrations, and target City Councils

• Organize cross-movement calls as a Palestinian-led organization as a guiding force to share resources, tactics, and demands, to over 100+ organizations

These efforts are having a great impact, and we must keep fighting for justice for as long as it takes. 62 members of Congress have now called for a ceasefire – expanded from an initial group of just twelve. Countless public figures and celebrities have likewise called for a ceasefire. More than 100,00 new supporters have been mobilized to take action for justice with USCPR.  

USCPR was made for moments like this. People are depending on us to keep going, to keep advocating and building up our power for Palestinians across the diaspora and in Palestine. There’s so much more we must do to stop the bloodshed now and to end our government’s complicity. Please keep up the pressure and help us do more.

End Military Funding campaign

In April 2023, we launched a new campaign, "Palestine Will be Free: #StopArmingIsrael & Fund Our Communities," with the goal of mobilizing enough support in the U.S. to end our government's funding of Israel once and for all.

Ahead of Tax Day, we launched an interactive ‘U.S. Military Funding to Israel’ map to raise awareness and an action toolkit to give supporters the tools to advocate for change. On Tax Day, grassroots activists supported by USCPR held demonstrations in high-traffic areas of 31 cities around the country. They handed out over 8,000 satirical coupon flyers, showing how our tax dollars fund Israel’s violence, and the resources we could be funding instead.

As we commemorated 75 years of Palestinian resistance—and kept building for liberation—USCPR unveiled our new Grassroots Support Hub to offer strategic funding assistance for local organizing. After taking applications, USCPR powered Nakba 75 protests and community events in 12 cities. 

Thanks to your support, we were able to commission new artwork and help local groups print posters, get materials for sign-making parties, create banners, secure event spaces, and much more. See a glimpse of the impact in these photos!

Since 2020, your generosity has equipped 29 USCPR youth fellows with the resources to drive forward cutting-edge campaigns for Palestinian rights. That support ranges from weekly check-ins with mentors, to monthly base building and campaign escalation workshops, to peer coaching sessions with USCPR staff and coaches. 

Because of you, youth fellows are making a difference in their communities, transforming people power into meaningful political change and bringing us closer to Palestinian liberation. 

Meet three USCPR Youth Fellows—Yasmeen, Munna, and Craig—and learn what they’ve been up to this year thanks to your continued support.

We are excited to announce the launch of a new, affiliated organization: USCPR Action, a 501(c)(4) organization.

USCPR already takes advantage of every tool at our disposal as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to build political power to advance Palestinian rights. However, there are certain things we cannot do that inhibit our ability to build political power as fast and as effectively as we know we need to. 

USCPR Action will allow us to take our policy work to the next level with access to the following tools:

• Engaging in unlimited amounts of lobbying. Currently, we are restricted in the amount of lobbying we can do as a 501(c)(3).

• Sending questionnaires to candidates for office and publishing voter guides so that our supporters know which candidates support Palestinian rights and which don’t.

• Publicly endorsing candidates, coordinating with them through a PAC, and advocating for or against a particular candidate to the general public.

• Coordinating with progressive political parties to ensure their platforms and advocacy include positive positions on Palestine. 

Making our supporters aware of opportunities to help elect endorsed candidates.

FINANCES

With the generous support of nearly 5,000 individual donors and several committed foundations, we again grew our annual revenue, increased our reserve slightly, and expanded programming as we return to more and more in-person work. Thank you to our generous supporters who have made USCPR’s growth possible.

We need your help to do even more. As we look to the year ahead, please donate to grow the movement for Palestinian rights at this critical time