Michigan Palestine Office organizes Forum on Diaspora

Subject: Michigan Palestinian American Community Town Hall Meeting re Our Connection to Palestine Present and Future

To: All concerned Palestinians in Metro Detroit & Ann Arbor area

From: Basima Farhat & Paul Salameh of Ramallah Club, George Khoury of Bir Zeit Society, Hasan Newash of the Palestine Office Michigan, and Dr. Karma Nabulsi & Randa Jamal of Civitas (originated at Oxford University)

Please attend our Palestinian Community Town Hall Meeting to explore Michigan's Palestinian Diaspora Community needs and concerns. This is part of a global effort conducted among Palestinian Diaspora communities across the globe. See the attachments above and summary below for more details.

Meeting Time & Date: 6:30 PM, Tuesday June 28th. (Finger food provided; program will conclude at 9:30 PM)
Place: St. Mary's Cultural Center, East Room
18100 Merriman Rd. ( between 6 & 7 Mile Rd.)
Livonia, MI 48152
Admission: Free

All adult Palestinians 18 and above, including those born to one Palestinian parent, are urged to participate. This is an important workshop to help shape our US role and our connection to Palestine, in the present and future. Hopefully, this will serve as a step forward towards creating our own Palestinian American representative institutions, aside from those in existence today that are based on Palestinian original town affiliation or religious beliefs.
Please help us succeed! Your attendance is very important. RSVP to the Palestine Office Michigan, 313 945-9660 by June 27th, in order to accommodate necessary logistics, i.e. food, chairs etc.

Background & Objectives
This is an invitation for the Michigan Palestinian Community to participate in workshops being conducted across the globe among Diaspora Palestinians. Originating in Nuffield College, Oxford University, in the UK, this research project aims at assessing "how Palestinian refugee communities living in exile in the Middle East, Europe, and further afield can build civic structures and mechanisms to enable better communication with their national representative and institutions, the humanitarian agencies that serve them, and other refugee communities, both inside and outside of Palestine. It is almost entirely a volunteer project, run by the communities themselves, and is facilitated by a very small team who are coordinating the activities in order to carry forward the voices of the refugees themselves to the relevant bodies, and bring the urgent needs of the Palestinian refugees to the attention of the international community. This project will restore the vital links between all tiers of Palestinian civil society, and reconnect them with their national representative the PLO and national institutions that have suffered fragmentation in the past decade.

This project gives the Palestinian refugee and exile communities the chance to specify the structures and mechanisms for communication with concerned parties and identify their own priorities. This initiative does not seek to limit or specify the structures, mechanisms, and priorities articulated by the refugees. It provides a practical service to those communities, through which members of those communities can define their own needs, in their own voices. The task of the project team is to bring those voices forward. The project is based on the belief that opinion polls and surveys are not the most authentic way to discover the real needs and choices of Palestinian refugees. Participatory involvement where people are allowed to speak for themselves is a more valuable and trustworthy methodology."

Finally, and repeating from above, this town hall meeting will serve as a step forward towards creating our own Palestinian American representative institutions, aside from those in existence today that are based on Palestinian original town affiliation or religious beliefs. Please help us succeed! Your attendance is very important. RSVP to the Palestine Office Michigan, 313 945-9660 by June 27th.

On behalf of the Ad Hoc Committee, I look forward to seeing you on the Eve of June 28th at St. Mary's Cultural Center East Room. 3r cul.
Hasan Newash
Palestine Office Michigan
313 945-9660