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1. Brooklyn Museum - 200 Eastern Parkway
2. BNY Mellon - 2 Hason Palce
3. Chuck Schumer’s House - 9 Prospect Park West
4. Brooklyn Borough Hall - 209 Joralemon St.
5. Barclays Center - 620 Atlantic Avenue
6. Congressman Dan Goldman’s Office - 340A 9th St.
7. Manhattan Bridge
8. Brooklyn Bridge
9. JPMorgan Case - 4 Chase Metrotech Center
10. Morgan Stanley - 1 Pierrepont St.

109425+ everywhere you see:Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King, Puma ++361

“It shall pass, I keep hoping. It shall pass, I keep saying.
Sometimes I mean it. Sometimes I don’t. And as Gaza keeps
gasping for life, we struggle for it to pass, we have nochoice but to fight back and to tell her stories. For Palestine.”- Refaat Alareer, a poet and scholar killed by Israel on December 7, 2023
1. The Museum Remains Silent: The Brooklyn Museum remains silent about the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. This is no surprise, because the museum is a nexus of Zionism, empire, and settler-colonization. The museum bears directconnections to the institutional, state, and philanthropy networks materially supporting Israel. We are here to highlight these ties,
and to call for their severance. Severing the support-networks of Zionism running through cultural institutions advances our overall movement for anti-colonial liberation. In the process, it allows us to imagine and practice a different kind of cultural formation
allied with freedom and justice rather than the ruinous course of late imperialism and its apartheid-state proxy.
2. The Workers Have Spoken: On November 12, Brooklyn Museum workers and their supporters issued a statementthat begins “We are writing in our capacity as workers at the Brooklyn Museum to unequivocally recognize Israel’s ongoingactions in Gaza as genocide of the Palestinian people; to stand with Palestinians as they resist violent colonial occupation
and apartheid; and to call on our colleagues in the cultural field, as well as our Brooklyn Museum community, to join thismovement.” They continue that “We refuse to make this issue more complicated than it is: the unrelenting killing of Palestinians
must stop with a ceasefire and the occupation of Palestinian land must end. As Museum workers, we know the powerful rolethat institutions play in uplifting impactful cultural voices. We also recognize the dissonance between the way that cultural
institutions amplify and historicize justice movements of the past while often failing to fully engage with those in the present.
American institutions’ silence on this matter contributes to the erasure of this genocide from the historical record; with this letter,
we aim to correct that while making it clear that at this crucial moment, we will not become complicit by remaining silent.”
Our action today, December 8, finds resonance with this statement of resolve by Brooklyn Museum workers, inviting everyone to escalate the struggle throughout the cultural field and beyond.
3. Interconnected/Ongoing Struggles: The museum has been a site of intensive mobilization over the past decade,beginning with a two-pronged action against the Zionist photography exhibition This Place and the museum’s entwinementwith the real-estate industry. The museum also owns the largest collection of African art in the United States, for example,
yet the Museum refuses to make and take concrete steps towards Black liberation, which is inextricably tied to anti-colonial
struggles here, there, and everywhere. Our interconnected struggles have shown the world that the museum holds stolen culture and stands on stolen land, operating as a tool of racialized gentrification and displacement. Calls by community groups
for a multi-issue Decolonization Commission were ignored. Yet in its recently adopted Land Acknowledgement, the museum
claims that “We are committed to addressing exclusions and erasures of Indigenous peoples, and confronting the ongoinglegacies of settler colonialism in the Museum’s work.” What does the museum have to say about the peopleof Palestine, and the outpouring of Palestine Solidarity by Indigenous movements in Turtle Island?
4. Weaponizing the Charge of Anti-Semitism: The museum has remained silent about the genocide, but a recent
incident forced it to implicitly clarify its position on pro-Palestinian voices. On November 22, a Zionist museum attendee
claimed to media outlets to have felt threatened by pamphlets displayed at the museum as part of the Printed Matter Zine fair,charging that the phrases “globalize the intifada” and “From the River to the Sea,” were incitements to anti-Semitic violence.
In a statement to the New York Post, a museum spokesperson confirmed this charge, saying “The anti-Semitic expressions
included in the zines absolutely do not represent the views and values of the Brooklyn Museum.” This equation of anti-Zionist
solidarity with anti-Semitic hatred of Jewish people--thus conflating Jewish people and the settler-colonial project of Israel--isa core ideological precept of the Israeli state and its supporters. It sends a warning signal to cultural workers who would dare
speak out against genocide--including those who are Jewish. Preempting this charge, the Brooklyn Museum workers write,“Many of the authors come to this stance of solidarity with ancestral history of genocide and oppression and present-day
experience of the effects of white supremacy, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and the long legacies of colonialism. Some of theauthors and signatories of this letter are Jewish and honor our ancestors by refusing the Zionist perpetuation of genocide in
our names.” Taking direct action at the museum in furtherance of highlighting and severing the tiesof Zionist support networks in the cultural field amplifies the courage of all those speaking out inthe face of repression, direct and indirect, at museums, universities, and other institutions.

Zionist support networks are woven throughout
the upper echelons of the Brooklyn Museum,
overlapping with and reinforcing support forthe other facets of the museum’s settler-colonialand imperialist orientation toward people,land, and the planet.
Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy
Director. A long-time opponent of the Boycott Divest Sanction(BDS) movement since her days at Creative Time, Pasternakholds a directorship named after Shelby White and her deceased
husband Leon Levy. The Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for
Archaeological Publications supports research on archaeologicalfieldwork led by the Israel Antiquities Authority, centered on
the narrative of ‘biblical Israel’ which fuels the toxic right-wing
nationalist and Zionist political agenda. The most importantarchaeological discovery by the IAA, sponsored by the Shelby
White and Leon Levy Program Archaeological program, is amosaic dating back to the roman period, located in the town ofLod, which in May 2021 was put under the state of emergency
by Netanyahu following the uprising of the local Palestinian
population. The mosaic is now the site of a sleek museum, largely
funded by White, whose mission is, in the words of its director, ‘topromote community tourism in areas of conflict’. It is not the firsttime that archaeology is used to displace Palestinians in contested
areas, relocating local farmers from their land, touristifying theireconomies, and robbing them of their history, with false research
aimed at legitimizing the historical existence of the biblical stateof Israel. Last year, White was under criminal investigation by theManhattan district attorney, for her antiquities collection, worth
over $69 millions and hosted at Met, was nearly entirely looted.
Barbara Vogelstein, Chairman of the Board ofTrustees; Vogelstein was among the public supporters of the2017 “Governors United” campaign by the American Jewish
Committee, which succeeded in pressuring the governors of all
50 US States into signing a public advertisement announcing“We, all 50 governors across the United States and the mayorof the District of Columbia, affirm: The goals of the BDS (Boycott,Divestment and Sanctions) movement are antithetical to our values
and the values of our respective states. We support Israel as a vital
U.S. ally, important economic partner and champion of freedom.”
In 2022, Vogelstein was a committee member of the Wall Street
Dinner hosted by the United Jewish Appeal Federation, the Zionist
organization headed by Mark Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global
Management and a key actor in the targeting of pro-Palestinesolidarity at the University of Pennsylvania and beyond.
Neil Simpkins, Treasurer of the Board: Simpkins is asenior managing director at Blackstone, the assets managementcompany known for profiteering from the housing crisis,
investment in Amazon deforestation, and financing Israeli techfirms partnered with the state and military. Blackstone gave 7
million dollars directly to Israel in the aftermath of October 7th,
making it one of the largest corporate donors to the state.
Thomas Brodsky, Board Member: Brodsky is a partner inthe Brodsky Organization which owns and manages thousands ofluxury rentals, condos, and commercial spaces across Brooklyn
and Manhattan. He is the son of Daniel Brodsky, director ofBrodsky who is a known slumlord (and chair of the board of theMetropolitan museum from 2011-2021)

Sarah Arison, Board Member: Arison is Chairman of theBoard of MoMA PS1, President of the Arison Art Foundation,
daughter of Israeli billionaire Shari Arison, heir to the Carnival
Cruise Lines fortune. The Arisons have been crucial figuresin the making of Miami as an ultra-luxury arts hub since the1980s, and premier mediators between the cultural fields ofIsrael and the United States.
Jill Bernstein, Board Member: Bernstein is president of theFriends of the Israel Museum, which describes itself as follows:“A non-profit organization which supports the Israel Museum inJerusalem, the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel andthe nation’s encyclopedic museum of art and archaeology. Ourannual program includes a number of exciting social events, andexclusive private collection and studio visits in New York, Palm
Beach and Los Angeles. We also offer fascinating art-centric travel
opportunities abroad and shorter trips within the U.S. With an
AFIM membership, you will participate in sustaining the strength ofthe Israel Museum and meet like-minded collectors and enthusiasts
who share a passion for art and a commitment to Israel!”

Overlapping Corporate Donors:
After October 7, major U.S. corporations gave millions ofdollars directly to the state of Israel or to pro-Israeli groups,
on top of the myriad investments many of them have across all
sectors of the Israeli economy, including military contractors.
Many of these same corporations also partner with andsponsor the Brooklyn Museum, including:American Express - $1.5 million in pro-Israeli donations
Bank of New York Mellon - major investor in Elbit, theweapons manufacturer
Bank of America - $1million commitment to Israel
Citi - $1 million donation
Chanel - $4 million to Israeli organizations
Bloomberg - $25 million to Israeli organizations
JPMorgan Chase - $1 million
Hearst - $900,000 to aid Israel
It is clear from the composition of its board, and the corporategroup that directly support it, that the Brooklyn Museum is part ofthe industrial/military/cultural complex that is directly responsible
for the genocide in Gaza. This link between art, gentrification andtechnologies of mass killing must be broken.
Museums only care about colonized peoples after the genocide,the stealing of land and the looting of culture takes place. They
turn freedom into a commodified reality from the past without any
roots in the living struggle. They want the art, not the people. We
refuse to wait around for the Brooklyn Museum’s “Palestine: Fromthe Rubble” exhibition. We refuse to normalize museums
or any other institution which benefits and profits
from colonization, imperialism, and war. We refuse
the Brooklyn Museum’s silence around Palestineand other anti-colonial struggles. Today, we meetat the Brooklyn Museum to stand in these refusals
as well as to affirm our unconditional solidarity
with the Palestinian revolution, which resonates
universally across the world and throughout thesettler-colony of the so-called United States.