WHAT: Press Conference to Oppose Vancouver Public Library (VPL’s) Anti-Palestinian Staff Ban on Palestinian Symbols 

WHO:

• Omar El Akkad: Award-winning VPL Guest Author 

• Veronica Martisius: BCCLA

• Anne Riley: Interdisciplinary Artist, declined offer of 2025 VPL Indigenous Storyteller in Residence in opposition to this VPL ban

• Mercedes Eng: BC Book Prize Author

• Palestinian community members

WHEN: Wednesday March 12 at 3 pm 

WHERE: VPL Central Library Courtyard, 350 West Georgia

Vancouver, BC, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ/– March 10, 2025 – Award-winning VPL guest author Omar El Akkad will speak against the VPL’s controversial enforcement of workplace policies that target staff who wear Palestinian symbols including keffiyehs and watermelon pins. He will be joined at a press conference on March 12 at 3 pm at VPL by a local coalition of authors, Palestinian community members, the BC Civil Liberties Association, and artist Anne Riley who declined the VPL 2025 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence in opposition to the VPL anti-Palestinian staff ban.

“I have no issue with VPL trying to keep its staff and patrons safe, but this idea that a staff member wearing a pin or an item of clothing in support of Palestine is somehow a threat to workplace safety strikes me as not only false, but also an extremely selective enforcement of policy. There are no public institutions I admire more than libraries, and I hope VPL reverses this enforcement, as tens of thousands of people have already asked them to do,” says author Omar El Akkad.  El Akkad is the VPL featured guest later that evening.

This press conference will focus on the impacts of VPL’s policy: anti-Palestinian racism and punishment for VPL staff expressing solidarity with Palestine. The VPL administration’s claim that Palestinian cultural symbols pose a “threat” to workplace safety is unfounded, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic. The policy also goes against the library’s professed values of inclusion and intellectual freedom. Even more troubling is the selective enforcement of this workplace policy; staff have been permitted to wear symbols of solidarity with other oppressed and colonized peoples even though there are likely library patrons on “both sides” of those issues.

“The BC Civil Liberties Association stands in solidarity with VPL staff who oppose the VPL’s discriminatory and hypocritical ban on expression in support of Palestine. Wearing a watermelon pin or keffiyeh in solidarity with Palestinians and in protest of Israel’s conduct and Canada’s response, are legitimate forms of political expression that must be protected not suppressed.” says BCCLA lawyer Veronica Martisius.

El Akkad’s VPL book talk later that evening is “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” touching on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

According to Tamer Aburamadan, Palestinian community member and part of Concerned Patrons of VPL: “The VPL is hosting an author whose book calls out the hypocrisy and cowardice of Western institutions. Public institutions like the VPL must acknowledge the genocide in Gaza and uphold the human rights and dignity of the Palestinian people. VPL leadership must immediately scrap their racist prohibition on staff wearing Palestinian symbols. At least 13 Gazan public libraries have been completely destroyed. What is the VPL waiting for?”

In El Akkad’s own words, upon which his latest book is based, “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”

In the last month, VPL patrons and community members have sent over 65,000 letters to the VPL to reverse their ban on Palestinian symbols and put an end to this anti-Palestinian racism.