🍉 VanGran4Pal Community Newsletter (January 29, 2026)
Neighbours and friends,
We’re on the lookout for volunteers! Working on this newsletter every couple of weeks helps us to organize our thoughts, feel connected to the community, and be less hopeless about it all. However, it isn’t always easy to manage everything and take breaks with such a small team. So, if you’re interested in contributing in some way, please reply to this email or reach out directly to vangran4palnewsletter@proton.me.
This week, we want to highlight the positive news of thousands of new users flocking to UpScrolled, a new social media app created by Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian Issam Hijazi. If you haven’t already, download it and sign up! Lots of us have been taking steps to extract ourselves from the domination and censorship of Meta, and pulling away from supporting Spotify and other platforms that have questionable investors and make grotesque advertising choices in pursuit of profit over humanity. It can be annoying to switch over, but you can get a few friends together and make an event of it! Put your money where your mouth is - the more of us who make these changes, the stronger and better these alternate services become. Recommendations we’ve received or what we use ourselves are: Qobuz for music, Proton for email and storage, Signal for messaging, and boycott-safe DuckDuckGo for web search.
Scroll down for upcoming events, including two local protests happening TOMORROW (Friday!) that really need your support. We all know how many struggles are interconnected - we need to be at the forefront of these issues as they start to rear their heads here. CBSA is working hard to follow in the footsteps of ICE: our voices on global issues matter not just as allies, but because these issues are present at home too.
Actions you can take
The No More Loopholes Act will go to a vote in Parliament at the end of February. The critical window to act to pressure MPs to vote for it is right now.
It's time to push MPs to pick a side: Will they continue to funnel unrestricted and unregulated arms to Trump’s illegal wars, ICE’s campaign of terror, and Israel’s ongoing genocide? Or will they listen to the Canadian public and ensure that Canadian military exports are aligned with international law?
Upcoming Events
Hootsuite out of ICE & Pattison, no deal with ICE | January 30
Date & Location
đź“… January 30
⏰ 3:00 - 7:00 PM
About
This Friday: Two Vancouver groups, two locations, one message. Canadian companies have no business working with ICE. Join us. 🚫🧊
3-5pm — Hootsuite HQ (111 East 5th Ave) with @democracyrisingnow
5-7pm — Pattison HQ (1067 West Cordova) with @indivisible_vancouver
The No More Loopholes Act: Cleaning Up the Canadian Arms Trade | January 30
Date, time & Location
đź“… January 30
⏰ 4:00 PM
đź“Ť SFU Downtown Vancouver Campus | Harbour Centre | Room 2270
About
On January 30, join CCMS and the community for a discussion on the Canadian arms trade and recent proposed legislation to demand transparency around it: "The No More Loopholes Act: Cleaning Up the Canadian Arms Trade."
Bill C-233, the No More Loopholes Act, is a private member’s bill put forward by Vancouver-East MP Jenny Kwan in September 2025 to press Canada to abide by the Arms Trade Treaty that it signed in 2019. Currently, arms exported to the US are exempted and have ended up being used by Israel in Gaza, by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and in many other places. The private member’s bill will be voted on in Parliament at Second Reading in late February.
All That's Left of You | January 30 - February 5
Date & Location
January 30 - February 5
VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema
About
In the Occupied West Bank of the 1980s, a Palestinian teenager is swept into a protest that changes the course of his family’s life. Reeling from its aftermath, his mother, Hanan (played by writer-director Cherien Dabis), shares the story that led them to that fateful moment, going back to the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, when the boy’s grandfather (Adam Bakri) elects to stay put in Jaffa to look after the orange groves and entreat for peace, even as his family and neighbours flee their homeland. Spanning seven decades, this epic drama traces the hopes and heartaches of one Palestinian family across three generations.
Palestine After the Gaza Genocide: A Talk by Mouin Rabbani | February 4
Date, time & Location
February 4 at 6:30 pm
Room 1600, SFU Harbour Centre
About
Mouin Rabbani is a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. He is a researcher, analyst, and commentator specializing in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and contemporary Middle East issues.
Tamir Moustafa is Professor of International Studies. His research interests include comparative judicial politics, religion and politics, authoritarianism, politics of the Middle East, and, more recently, the politics of knowledge production.
Here/After, Amulets in Ritual by Rawan Hassan | February 6 - March 21
Date, time & Location
Running February 6 to March 21, 2026.
Opening Friday, February 6 | 6 pm to 8 pm.
About
In Rawan Hassan’s solo exhibition, Here/After, Amulets in Ritual, she confronts the tenuous connection to hope in the face of the ongoing violent occupation in her homeland through a new series of tatreez-based work. These new works, a collection using protective amulet designs, moves stitch-by-stitch to close the gaps between acts of rebellion and fills the pauses with an invitation to convene together in the overwhelming limbo of distance and waiting for liberation. This exhibition does not argue the need and worth of protecting loved ones and instead Hassan imbues these pieces with a belief that beyond the Israeli occupation of Palestine, there is a deserving and unbound future for the Palestinian people that has always been worth fighting for, however you can, from wherever you are.
About the artist:
Rawan Hassan (she/her) is an interdisciplinary visual artist based on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, colonially known as “Vancouver”. Her works explore the complex relationship between preserving and evolving Palestinian craft traditions, such as tatreez (embroidery). She explores materials that embody the questions of what was and what could possibly be through textile-based artworks and drawings. Her hope, is that her practice might open up the conversations on Palestinian identity, grief, resilience, resistance against erasure, ongoing occupation, colonization and potential forms of Palestinian futurism. @oddbiscuit
Palestine 36 Film Screening | February 15
Date, time & Location
February 15 from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Notional Space, Vancouver, BC
About
A Benefit Film Screening for Clean Shelter in Gaza by East Van Youth for Social Change. East Van Students for Social Change is a youth organization that strives to engage in international and local action towards social justice through activism and fundraising. We will be screening Annemarie Jacir’s 2025 award-winning film Palestine 36 – a historical dramatization of the Arab revolt against British occupation in 1930s Palestine. All funds will be donated to Clean Shelter, a humanitarian NGO that supplies clean water, shelter, and sanitary solutions for displaced Gazan civilians.
As part of our fundraising efforts, we are holding an online silent auction from January 24th to February 16th. Bid here: https://www.32auctions.com/evysc
Community Spotlights
You may have all been following the news about how Israel is making the work of international aid organisations extremely challenging with limitations and restrictions. We’re spotlighting Gaza Soup Kitchen again as Parents4Palestine shared this:
“Although the Gaza Soup Kitchen is registered as a charity in the US, their work is carried out by a local team who source food from inside Gaza itself. Because they are truly local, we do not expect these new restrictions to directly affect their ability to operate at this time. While many international organizations depend on Israeli-controlled approvals to bring in staff and supplies, Gaza Soup Kitchen’s model allows them to keep working even as others are being pushed out.”
Word has also reached us that Cross and Crows bookstore is facing closure. Cross and Crows is a pro-Palestine, queer-owned local bookstore and a safe space for many. These safe third spaces are important now more than ever - if you can, please support their GoFundMe!
Book Club
Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd
Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.