St. Louis and I rise today in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in memory of our brother,

Bassem Masri, a Ferguson activist who was with us on the front lines of our uprising for justice following the police murder of Michael Brown Jr.

Bassam was a St. Louis Palestinian. Basam also lived in Jerusalem, Palestine.

Bassam was one of us.

He showed up ready.

As a Palestinian, he was ready to resist, to rebel, to rise up with us as our St.

Louis community mourned Mike Brown Jr.'s state-sanctioned murder and as we demanded an end to the

militarized police occupation of our communities.

Palestinians know what state violence, militarized policing and occupation of their communities

look like, and they've lived that reality of having to go through checkpoints

while trying to live their lives. They know this reality and the reality of so much more.

So when heavily militarized police forces showed up in Ferguson in 2014, Bassem and so many others

of our St. Louis Palestinian community. Our Palestinian siblings showed up too.

I remember sitting in a circle on the grass near where Michael Brown Jr. was murdered,

and I remember them describing to us what to do when militarized law enforcement shot us with rubber bullets

or when they tear gassed us. I remember learning that the same equipment that they used to brutalize us in the same

equipment that we send to the Israeli military to police and brutalized Palestinians.

I remember BASM putting his life on the line with us.

I remember him live streaming for the whole world to see our

struggle. I remember our solidarity and I remember the harassment, the extortion, the brutalization

he faced for resisting with us. That harassment, that extortion, that brutalization by a heavily

armed militarized presence in our community, that's what we fund

...