Northern Colorado community members gathered together for a night of music, art and insight in support of local Palestinian families saving money to evacuate their relatives out of Gaza.

The Palestine Benefit Concert was hosted by the Fort Collins chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and other partner organizations on Saturday, July 6, at The Lyric.

Proceeds from tickets, donations and the silent auction of art pieces were directly donated to the families’ GoFundMe requests. Local Colorado artists offered paintings, tapestries and other art pieces to be auctioned off.

“Take home that beautiful art and think about it, how it helped save someone in Gaza every time you look at it,” said Alex Scott, the political education committee chair for Fort Collins DSA.

Fort Collins DSA said the money would be split evenly among four families. The cost for one person to flee from Gaza begins at $5,000.

Partner organizations included Rubble Art Collective, Colorado Palestine Coalition and Northern Colorado Jewish Voice for Peace. Each organization had a table with informative pamphlets, activities and ways to get involved.

Bands and solo artists performed their music with passion as the night went on. Autumnal, Ducki, Dry Ice and Alex Woodchek all took the stage, with some songs centered on anti-war beliefs.

In between performances, Scott spoke with featured guests about historical and recent events and how to actively support Palestinians. Speakers included Karim Mattar, Linda Amin Badwan, Ella Smith and GD, a surprise guest who provided only her initials for safety purposes.

Mattar, an English professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Scott first discussed the history of Palestinian displacement, the idea of a two-state solution and the pressure being placed on United States colleges and universities that are protesting.

“It’s our job, it’s our task,” Mattar said. “It’s our responsibility to keep on educating, mobilizing and doing what we can to shed light, to help people understand what’s going on.”

Badwan and GD later spoke on boycotting, divesting and sanctioning and the harsh realities of life in Israel. Badwan was born 10 miles outside of the Old City of Jerusalem. She shared stories of the oppression she and her family faced as Palestinians from Israel’s government, policies and culture.

“I went to school in Ramallah, so that meant we would have to travel,” Badwan said. “Because I was born there, I was issued a document called a huwiyyah, and huwiyyah translates into identification for us. And that is the way the Israeli government and Israeli soldiers basically control how we move, our movement across all spaces and places, even within our own village.”

Badwan mentioned that checkpoints for identification have increased significantly but have always been oppressive.

“And so growing up, I would go to school (and) one way there would be bomb threats on my way in Ramallah, then on the way back it would be tear gas and just rocks and shooting from the Israeli soldiers,” Badwan said. “I remember once I was running so fast that one of the Israeli soldiers’ guns, semi-automatic weapons, bumped into my arm, and I was left with a bruise for days from that. And that’s the kind of thing that people are growing up in constantly.”

GD shared her story of growing up in Israel since she was five years old and her experience noticing patterns of the Zionist ideology in Israel. GD left the country in 2014 as a political immigrant.

Smith, an organizer of NoCo JVP and Colorado State Students for Justice in Palestine, concluded the night and spoke to the complex relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

“True peace and liberation can only be achieved through acknowledging the root causes of violence rather than pushing divisive narratives that serve to justify further bloodshed,” Smith said. “The lives and fates of Palestinians, Jews and Israelis are all inextricably intertwined, and we are fighting for safety that cannot come until everyone is free.”

Reach Cadence Cardona at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.