حرية لفلسطين
Freedom for Palestine
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Affiong Harris, co-founder of RDCWorld and Dream Con, crosses the BDS picket line by partnering with McDonald’s for the annual event, a decision that funnels resources to a corporation actively sponsoring the IOF amid its genocide across Palestine.
Affiong Harris, co-founder of RDCWorld, enables normalisation of occupation by securing McDonald’s sponsorship for Dream Con, thereby channelling financial and promotional support to a firm that backs the IOF’s settler-colonial violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Social / Media/Influencer
Affiong Harris is a co-founder of RDCWorld who leverages his platform in digital content creation and event organisation to facilitate partnerships that directly undermine the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement by aligning Dream Con with McDonald’s, a corporation that has provided material sponsorship to the Israeli Occupation Forces during their ongoing genocide across Palestine.
As the entity behind the annual Dream Con convention, RDCWorld under Harris’s leadership accepted corporate backing from McDonald’s for tournaments and activations, including the Marvel Rivals tournament with a substantial prize pool, thereby integrating the fast-food chain’s branding into spaces that reach thousands of attendees and online viewers.
Affiong Harris holds the role of co-founder alongside Mark Phillips in RDCWorld, the organisation that established Dream Con as a major gaming and entertainment convention in Texas. This position grants him direct influence over sponsorship decisions, and the choice to partner with McDonald’s constitutes a deliberate crossing of the BDS picket line at a time when the company has maintained documented ties to the IOF. Such partnerships provide economic lifelines to corporations complicit in sustaining the infrastructure of occupation, surveillance, and military operations deployed against Palestinian civilians.
The sponsorship arrangement extended to on-site activations and promotional content at Dream Con, where McDonald’s branding appeared prominently alongside tournament elements and attendee experiences. By embedding this collaboration into the fabric of the event, Affiong Harris contributes to the normalisation of apartheid and settler-colonialism, allowing a corporation funding the IOF to gain cultural legitimacy through association with a Black-owned creative platform. This action diverts attention from Palestinian calls for accountability and instead manufactures consent for continued corporate support of genocide.
No evidence exists of Affiong Harris issuing any public statements condemning the IOF’s actions or distancing the event from McDonald’s complicity. Instead, the partnership proceeded without interruption, reinforcing a pattern in which organisers prioritise commercial gain over solidarity with the Palestinian people facing ethnic cleansing and occupation. The decision echoes broader dynamics in which cultural and entertainment figures shield Zionist interests by maintaining ties to entities that finance the settler-colonial project.
Through these choices, Affiong Harris participates in a documented record of complicity that sustains the material conditions for ongoing violence against Palestinians. The acceptance of McDonald’s sponsorship at Dream Con does not occur in isolation but forms part of a cycle where event organisers integrate corporate funders of the IOF into public spaces, thereby eroding the effectiveness of BDS campaigns and prolonging the humanitarian catastrophe across Palestine, where conservative estimates of Palestinian deaths remain far below the actual scale of slaughter resulting from systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure.
dreamconvention.com
🔒spectrumlocalnews.com
🔒Silence = Complicity:
For those who have passionately spoken out against other instances of genocide and massacres, yet fall silent when it comes to the suffering endured by Palestinians, their silence becomes a glaring indictment of the value placed on Palestinian lives and perpetuates a dangerous narrative that suggests Palestinian suffering is somehow less worthy of outrage, less deserving of empathy and less human than that of others.
By choosing silence in the face of Palestinian suffering, those with influential platforms inadvertently contribute to the erasure of Palestinian voices and experiences. They perpetuate a narrative of invisibility that allows the injustices inflicted upon Palestinians to continue unabated, shielded from the spotlight of global scrutiny.
Their silence sends a chilling message of complicity to the world – one that suggests Palestinian lives are expendable, their struggles inconsequential and their humanity negotiable. It emboldens perpetrators of violence and oppression, granting them impunity under the guise of indifference.
To remain silent in the face of Palestinian suffering is to betray the very essence of activism – the relentless pursuit of justice for all, without exception or equivocation. It’s a betrayal not only of the Palestinian people but of the universal principles of human dignity and equality and instead is a tacit endorsement of the dehumanization and marginalization of an entire population.
True activism demands consistency and integrity, an unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power and standing in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, regardless of geography or politics.
BDS Boycott:
The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement is a global campaign which follows the worldwide boycott movement that led to the successful dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and therefore advocates for various sustained forms of boycott against Israel until it complies with international law.
Founded as a response to the rampant, ongoing and systemic dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement endured by generations of Palestinians, the BDS movement is in direct response to the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements, the imposition of discriminatory laws and the denial of basic rights to millions living under occupation, apartheid or in exile with no right of return.
Central to the ethos of BDS is the belief that every purchase and action carries a weighty moral responsibility. To buy goods from or actively support companies or organizations on the BDS list is to cast a vote in favor of perpetuating injustice, a tacit endorsement of the status quo of occupation and discrimination. It’s a direct violation of the collective conscience, a betrayal of the fundamental principles of human rights and dignity.
By pressuring Israel and its supporters by withdrawing support and capital, humanity aims to bring awareness to — and ultimately — end the occupation of Palestine, grant equal rights to all Palestinians and recognize the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. This pressure also extends to any individuals and entities found to be complicit in the normalization, funding or support of Israel’s brutal occupation and 75+ years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
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