By Erum Khan + ted witzel + Katie Clarke + Byzmuth Ffrench + Al Thomas-Hall + Kristina Lemieux + Mason McDonald + Ludmylla Reis + Aidan Morishita-Miki + Katherine Teed-Arthur + Amber Pattison
Hey, it’s us at Buddies.
Since the publication of our multiple attempts at a statement on the ongoing genocide in Palestine, we wanted to let you know where we are at.
As we move into the heart of our 2024 – 25 season, we feel really-fucking-excited-terrified-unbelievably-grateful to share this programming with all of you. This year has been a high speed roller coaster ride in learning, failing, generating, trying, and restructuring a whole lot of how we do things here; from staff and board changes to producing a whole jam packed season of high intensity work speaking directly in line to our new core revamped values.
We’re still unpacking how an institution can uphold and challenge these (or any set of) values set forth by the people who work inside of it — an institution that is about to enter its 46th year of queer existence.
As we move forward into our future programming and partnership agreements, we want to let the publics who we serve know that we, as curators and leaders at Buddies, will be endorsing and adhering to PACBI (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) in the planning of all of our future programming.
PACBI is outlined as follows on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) website:
PACBI advocates for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions for their deep and persistent complicity in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights that are stipulated in international law.
It specifically targets the state of Israel and rejects, on principle, boycotts of individuals based on their opinion or identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion).
This commitment is an ongoing one. It is a commitment both to our support of the Palestinian people in the face of the ongoing genocide, and to engaging in consistent conversation with other theatres and arts organizations across Canada about the inherent political nature of the work that we do and the power that we have to effect change that can only happen if we work together.
As an institution, we are far from perfect, and these conversations are true tests of our deepest values. In endorsing PACBI, we are committing to these conversations, and trusting that we can have complex and multi-faceted conversations with other arts institutions, as well as our audiences and stakeholders.
We want to name again, that in our dreamings and envisionings of Buddies as an impossible place, we understand that though our individual work towards liberation may look different, they are all collectively bound together. Working in a space that honours queer audacity and artistic rigour as a means to build upon queer futures, pushes us towards the impossible; a task that we are committed to embodying in order to attain a sense of queer liberation.
This public endorsement is part of our continued effort to share our processes inside of this place, at this time. By naming a thing out loud (and not just doing it, quietly), we are contributing towards a global conversation about the ongoing implications of imperial warmongering through artwashing + pinkwashing, and so, our commitment to PACBI and conversations around it are ongoing and in-progress.
PACBI is a commitment we are making in our programming from here on out. We will apply this lens to all of our future programming.
We also want to make sure that our publics understand what it means for an institution like Buddies In Bad Times to endorse PACBI. So here are the guidelines we will be following:
• Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration, or joint projects with Israeli institutions that are complicit in the occupation and systemic denial of Palestinian rights;
• Support a comprehensive boycott of complicit Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
• Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.
This campaign, first established in 2004, specifically aims to draw a clear distinction towards institutional boycott and as such does not target individuals.
FAQs:
You’re attacking the free speech of artists and academics.
PACBI targets the State of Israel, its representatives, and complicit institutions. Committed to freedom of expression as stipulated in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, PACBI rejects, on principle, boycotts of individuals based on their opinion or identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion). PACBI targets institutions, not individuals, complicity, not identity
What about…
We know that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. However, the BDS movement (including PACBI) is all about strategic boycotts. Focusing on specific, strategic targets to boycott rather than trying to boycott everything all at once is an organizing strategy that actually works.
You’re isolating Israeli allies.
Israeli BDS activists have played an important role in calling on international artists to cancel performances in Tel Aviv and to refrain from otherwise lending their names to whitewash Israeli apartheid. You can get in touch with BDS’ Israeli partner, Boycott from Within, for more information.
PACBI is a symbolic gesture and not direct action.
No money. No normalization. PACBI is a direct and lasting action against the ideological and institutional branches of Israel’s apartheid regime. It adds pressure on Israel, raises awareness, and shifts public opinion.
See the BDS website for further elaboration or reach out to WAWOG (Writers Against the War on Gaza) at pacbi@wawog.com.
Thank you, Buddies.
Sincerely.
Will you consider escalating this a little bit further and isolate Jewish and non-Jewish artists that continue to support Israel? Perhaps you can create and publish a list of Zionist artists (i.e. Jews) that have not yet condemned Israel in the harshest terms as you and PACBI advocate? Why not institute a means test to Jewish artists who wish to work with Buddies but disagree with your political position and offer to “re-educate” them? Maybe you could send them to camps so they can unlearn their 3000 year old ancestral connection to Israel and coerce and extort them to view the world as you do and only create art as you and PACBI dictate? Shameful, Buddies in Bad Times is now serving a political agenda and censoring Jewish artists, except for the few tokens who think Judaism and Zionism are two different things. They are not and haven’t been since Mount Sinai. Am Israel Chai and kiss my Zionist ass.
what buddies said:
“we support strategically boycotting Israeli institutions as a means to apply pressure for ending a thoroughly documented and *ongoing* crime against humanity.”
what this person heard:
“fuck anyone who feels anything good about israel ever, fuck all jewish people, fuck anyone who thinks anything different from us ever, we want to send jewish people to concentration camps”
OK guy. your identitiy group’s legitimacy will go extinct because of your relentless commitment to making the least reasonable and most lazily and ineffectively manipulative arguments of all time.
sincerely, a token jew
oh also
“buddies is now serving a political agenda”
what do you mean, “now’? WHAT DID YOU THINK THIS PLACE WAS ABOUT, you absolute clown? playing dress-up?
Hi Token,
I am merely suggesting you and Buddies escalate. Why go only halfway? Create some lists and loyalty tests, you know, come up with some sort of final solution to this Jewish-Zionist art problem. Maybe you’ll make the list. I know I will. Historically it always begins with the artists who push.
Buddies should know better than any other art institution in this country. That’s what this place WAS about. Shmuck.
“why go half way? make lists! KILL ALL JEWS! MURDER PUPPIES! THROW 2-TON BOMBS ON ORPHANS WHY DON’T YOU!
(said in defense of a government currently throwing 2-ton bombs on orphans)
mhm, coherent and relatable very coherent and relatable
the absolute unflinching dedication to hyperbole and projection. it boggles the mind
The OP, as well as the global campaign it endorses *literally says in explicit and certain terms* that individuals are NOT targets, but institutions that are affiliated with actual, ongoing, documented, livestreamed, globally-recognized crimes of mass violence, ethnic cleansing, physical destruction of all life infrastructure
and you come here to say “THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE NAZI-GERMAN FINAL SOLUTION!!!! AGAINST JEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
you self-obsessed, arrogant, anti-intellectual, pathological victim
It’s always about individuals and know it. You are such a putz simply repeating hamas talking points verbatim. Useful idiot. So why exactly didn’t hamas evacuate non-combatants from a war zone they created?
my guy.
1. what is a “hamas talking point”? substantiate.
2. “why didn’t they move” is not a magic spell that retroactively justifies throwing 70,000 tons of explosives on people.
3. if hamas created the war zone of gaza, then israel created the war zone of oct 7. wanna keep going backwards in time? im here for it, let’s go.
4. there is no “evacuating” from gaza, it is and has been under israeli siege for 19 years. Israel controls all but one land border crossing, the entire air space, and the entire seaboard. Egypt collaborates with israel to maintain a seal on that part of the border as well.
5. once again – there is no such thing as “why didn’t they move” as a justification for having bombed people do death. DON’T BOMB THEM TO DEATH.
Nice deflection attempt. Why didn’t hamas evacuate civilians?
you: “question”
me: “answer”
you: “DEFLECTION!”
cool
Perhaps you will consider showing the film of Oct 7th. I’m sure you won’t have any problem since it was filmed by the Palestinians during their “resistance “and when you are finished showing that you can go on a trip to Gaza to see the makers of that film because I’m sure as a member of the LGBTQ you will be welcomed with open arms! Just make sure you don’t stay in any tall buildings if you know what I mean.
“as a queer person, how dare you think of the lives of queer people in a place where queer people are at risk of murder? the hypocrisy!”
what is going on with zionists’ commitment to Extra Absurd Arguments?
We can show the Oct 7 film, and then we can show the YEAR AND A HALF of film from gaza in a live stream. you know, to make sure “both sides” are represented.
So why exactly didn’t hamas evacuate non-combatants from a war zone they created?
see my answer to this stupid fucking question in the thread above.
I saw your non answer. It’s the big question your team can never answer. I am done with you. You’re embarrassing yourself.
cool, guy – we shall allow the readers of this thread to make their own call on who among the two of us was the purveyor of non-answers and embarrassment.
and for the interested:
https://jpst.it/4bFga
This is an outrageous move, supported only by your ignorance (or perhaps willful blindness?), hypocrisy and stupidity. A very sad time for your theatre.
substantiate those claims.
Andrea, note how the Jew has to substantiate claims, but somehow the other side does not.
I’m jewish, you fucking dog sneeze.
This is beautiful! It is incredible to see such an institution and community icon align its social justice values on all fronts. Buddies was such an important piece of me finding my identity in my youth. (Back in the day when the village queen, Patricia, was my Saturday night beacon of light) And I’m proud that it’s also part of my adulthood.
Shocking and disgusting. As a Jewish Lesbian, this theatre house offered me Art that I could relate to and enjoy. Never again will I support your organization.
I look at Judaism and Zionism as two different entities.
This is what true Jewish voices sound like https://www.instagram.com/jewishvoiceforpeace
can you articulate what’s shocking and disgusting about it?
Jennifer, note how the Jew has to substantiate claims, but somehow the other side does not.
I’m jewish, you fucking dog sneeze.