March 1, 2025, SOMERVILLE, MA: Several dozen Somerville residents including students, educators, and families gathered outside of Somerville High School in the early morning of Friday, February 28, to celebrate a year of Daily Somerville High standouts for Palestine. Since February 2024, Somerville residents have refused to stay silent during Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and Israel’s escalating violence, apartheid, and occupation in the West Bank and have spent every school day morning holding up signs protesting Israel’s violence for commuters to see on Highland Avenue in front of Somerville High School.

Begun by Palestinian long-time Somerville High teacher Jamal Halawa, the group of community members who stand out are diverse in age, background, and beliefs but are all connected through their commitment to freedom for Palestinians. Halawa spoke to the dozens of Somerville residents standing out on Friday morning, saying, “Today is the One Year Anniversary. It’s too bad that we have to do this, but we’re going to keep doing it, and keep reminding people, and keep Palestine on people’s minds.”
The one-year anniversary standout also fell on the first night of Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims. Halawa continued,“And tonight’s the first night of Ramadan. It’s a big day. It’s so beautiful to see all these people come out and show their love for Palestine.”
Alain Jehlan, local public school advocate and Jewish resident, often attends with a sign that reads “Another Jew for free Palestine.” Other signs read “HP [Hewlett-Packard] upholds apartheid” and “Free Palestine! Boycott HP.” The government of Israel uses Hewlett-Packard Enterprises technologies to uphold Israel’s system of racial discrimination and illegal settlements in Palestine. HP Data services allow Israeli prisons to separate and torture Palestinian prisoners. Since 2014, $1.7 million dollars have been spent on Hewlett-Packard services and products, according to public records requests of Somerville school purchases and contracts. Somerville for Palestine – an interfaith, interracial, intergenerational community organizing effort – urges Somerville City leaders to end the city’s complicity in Israeli violence against Palestinians by ensuring that no more Somerville dollars are awarded to companies profiting off of human rights violations and war crimes against Palestinians.
According to the Crowd Counting Consortium at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, from October 7, 2023 to May 29, 2024, Somerville High Standout for Palestine was found to be one of the top ten longest lasting pro-Palestine protests in the country and the longest at a high school. After the study’s publication, community members continued to standout for Palestine through the end of the 2023-2024 school year and began their daily show of support again at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, far surpassing initial daily protest counts. Somerville for Palestine commends these activists’ determination, consistency, and commitment to call for freedom for Palestine by showing that Somerville stands in solidarity with Palestinians in their demands for freedom from discrimination, occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
Another committed standout participant, Somerville resident, and long-time labor activist, Ed Childs, Friday morning shared with anniversary standout attendees the parallels he sees between the economic struggles in Somerville and attacks in Gaza: “This is an issue of every worker in the United States because the workers everywhere else have already said it’s their issue. Every bomb that falls on Gaza comes from our education funding. It comes from the deterioration of our healthcare system. That’s what we have to understand: that Gaza is us. We are family. Every bomb that goes to Gaza, or anywhere else, is a bomb on us.”

Somerville for Palestine is an intergenerational, interracial, and interfaith community-led group who formed in response to Israel’s U.S.-funded genocide against the Palestinian people. We are united in our steadfast advocacy for Palestinian