Efforts in Tampa

Efforts in the city of Tampa have been spearheaded by motivated student activists from the University of South Florida! On this page we are sharing our list of objectives, divestment petition, and an upcoming event. Our list of objectives was specifically created for the efforts in our area, for the use of current and potential local organizers. The No Appetite for Apartheid campaign run by activists from the University of South Florida is just a step in the process toward divestment of the USF Foundation. In order to push the USF Foundation to divest from corporations supplying the Israeli Defense Forces with weapons and other tools to carry out violence, we have launched a petition which has so far garnered over 180 signatures. Scroll down to see which corporations the foundation invests in, and make sure to sign our petition to show your support! We are also very happy to be holding a BDS Conference soon -- you can find out more about it by checking out the slideshow at the end!

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Objectives

Boycotting 

 

The initial effect of the campaign, obviously, is a direct boycott on Israeli imported goods. We aim to bar imports and economic staples of the ongoing apartheid from consistent business practice in Tampa through the education of community members, establishing a dialogue with local businesses, and in the culmination of the aforementioned work, in which we get our Apartheid-Free Stores! The Free Stores will circumvent much of the need for individual boycotting, which is much more time-consuming, less efficient, and less impactful in general to local and global business. 

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The creation of the Free Stores, instead, serve to make it realistic for individuals to boycott Israeli goods.  We aim to enlist as many local organizations as possible in the educational and practical aspects of this portion of the campaign to help stoke widespread public sentiment/demand. In this way, we are actively building infrastructure for a convenient and educated style of  boycotting.

 

Apartheid-Free Stores

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The Free Stores will serve as an important landmark for making consistent Apartheid-Free shopping and dining possible. They provide a promise to all customers that their products do not come from the yoke of Israeli colonization and ongoing suppression of a free Palestine, and are to be included on our Shop Apartheid-Free List, which will provide a detailed assessment of all official Free Stores in Tampa for conscious consumers. As the volume of stores increases and awareness grows, it will become growingly easier for the average consumer to make a conscious switch to Apartheid-Free Stores.

 

Divestment

 

Through the network of support we create through our boycotting efforts, we hope to channel this to more extensive divestment within the community from Israeli companies complicit in the ongoing apartheid state. This includes companies like Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, and Lockheed Martin. Considering the stakes for divestment are much wider and costlier than the more individualistic approach of boycotting, we will be building toward this stage as a second phase of the No Appetite for Apartheid campaign this Fall! With links to PCRF, the DSA BDS Working Group, Student Government, as well as all the Apartheid-Free Stores and supportive organizations we will continue to work with this summer, we intend for this to be a multi-pronged approach not reliant on any one factor, but a wide variety of different variables working together to secure feasible divestment in the near future. This is noted as in the past, SG appeals, as well as popular surveys, have failed to impress the USF Foundation who cite no need to “politicize” their investments, unless we can create a hostile enough environment toward apartheid that the Foundation sees this step as reasonable. We will need to organize through a variety of fields and employ different tactics to make this work, including but not limited to a creation of a massive network of Free-Stores, supportive organizations, disruption of civil society on campus, petitions, and SG work.

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The Divestment Petition

We are pushing for the USF Foundation to completely divest from corporations committing human rights violations against the Palestinian people. ​Check out our slideshow to see which corporations are complicit in the bloodshed and how they contribute to violence. ​