Only an hour after the university’s lawyers won their battle in court tostop NDP parliamentarians Svend Robinson and Libby Davies and activistJudy Rebick from speaking in Concordia’s Hall Building, the trio wasrallying a crowd of 500 supporters on the sidewalk in front of theuniversity.

The talk, dubbed “Peace and Justice in Palestine,” if held oncampus would have violated a ban on Middle East-related speech atConcordia imposed in the wake of confrontations between police andprotesters at a scheduled speech by former Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 9.

Svend Robinson promised that the injunction would be appealed to theSupreme Court of Canada if necessary. He expressed anger at being “forcedonto the streets by a university administration that has nothing butcontempt for free speech.”

Libby Davies applauded Concordia students for having the courage to “takeback public space,” comparing their struggle to that of squatters — housing activists who try to convert abandoned buildings into social housing through occupying the unused space — in her East Vancouver riding. She rejected the university’s claim that its ban onfree speech was imposed for reasons of safety, saying: “It is really about corporate interests.”

Judy Rebick took aim at the university’s corporate-dominated Board ofGovernors for its contempt for a tradition of democratic governance andfree speech that her generation fought for in the 1960s. Rebick reminiscedabout her days as a McGill University student activist in Montreal, “We fought aspart of the movement that started at Berkeley. And do you know what thatmovement was called? The Free Speech Movement.”

Rebick got an ear-splitting roar of applause from students when she offered the view that the business class has targeted their university “because Concordia has the most militant student body in the country.”

Two students with Palestinian-born parents also addressed the crowd. LeilaKhaled Mouammar and Samer Elatrash, both students, are among the twelvecharged in relation to their alleged roles in the September 9 anti-Netanyahu protests. Up until today most students charged under the university’s Code of Rights and Responsibilities had remained silent. Under the code, students’ names must remain confidential until students themselves make their identities known in public.

Mouammar, who says she was only exercising her “rights as a citizen ofCanada and a Concordia student” during the protest, nevertheless expressed a deep concern that she will not get a fair hearing. She has yet to see the evidence againsther, and she fears that some of the security video cassettes of her angryface may now be given to the media to smear her image.

Nevertheless, she says, “I had to go public. Otherwise I would have been prosecuted insilence.”

Elatrash says that Arab students like him are afraid to go public becauseof widespread racism. He claims that individuals are not being charged,but rather “they are basically charging stereotypes.”

All of the speakers called on Israel to end its illegal occupation of thePalestinian Occupied Territories. Throughout the rally, students and supporters chanted”Free Speech, Palestine!”