An escalating uprising demands human rights in Gaza

Americans with a conscience have mobilized from coast-to-coast to stop a genocidal massacre

Most of my posts focus on various dimensions of corruption, but I’m always excited to highlight creative grassroots efforts to challenge it. This week, examples have emerged from Washington DC to San Francisco, as Americans who care about international human rights have come together to declare dissent from the murderous genocide that continues to unfold in Gaza with critical support from both Netanyahu and Biden.

To the extent these events have drawn public attention, they have done so in isolation. Yet these mobilizations and direct actions have been organized to address common issues and concerns, inviting observation not in isolation, but rather as a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

A global consensus

A global consensus has emerged favoring international human rights, reflected in grassroots actions that concerned communities have organized in hundreds of cities across the world.

Source: Reuters

America & Israel continue to violate international law with impunity, enabled by their longstanding refusal to accept the jurisdiction of international bodies like the International Criminal Court. 

Responding to the complicity shared by Tel Aviv and Washington, voices have risen in dissent across every part of the United States.

From the East…

In the nation’s capital, activists marched by the hundreds of thousands on November 4. Over 250 organizations came together to plan the event, which was the country’s largest gathering ever among pro-Palestinian voices. One organizer, Layan Fuleihan from The People’s Forum, said, “[It] felt like this was…a turning point in the struggle for Palestine.”​

Events appear to be proving her right.

This week, 150 more blockaded the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, highlighting the unfortunate—and also revealing—fact that neither of the corporate political parties in Washington supports international human rights, or the global consensus favoring a long overdue cease-fire. The DNC’s role reinforcing the Republican position effectively disenfranchises American voters who support human rights, casting a shadow on Washington’s farcical claim to promote democracy abroad—or even to practice it here at home. 

Despite organizing a non-violent action, 90 participants were injured by police, offering a further indication of the state of what passes for “democracy” in our country. The Guardian reports that:

[V]olunteers were pepper-sprayed, kicked, pulled by the hair and dragged down flights of stairs by officers in riot gear, who they accused of ignoring longstanding protocols for non-violent protest by failing to issue dispersal notices or engage with the rally’s specially designated police liaison representative. 

In New York City, residents took action this week in a variety of ways. Highlighting the complicity of mass media institutions in preventable violence, activists protested at the Fox News HQ, recognizing the particular role played by that network. It has promoted lies justifying preventable violence for decades, from false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to false claims about beheaded babies in the wake of the October 7 attacks that shocked the oblivious Israeli defense establishment. New Yorkers have also recently taken action at the similarly biased New York Times, shutting it down earlier this month. 

Grassroots direct actions in New York City this week also acknowledged the crucial intersection between militarism and capitalism. New Yorkers also blocked the entrance of BNY Mellon, a financial institution that helps finance Israeli weapons, as well as another bank that funds the Tel Aviv campus of New York University.

…to the West

Across the continent, activists are the San Francisco Bay Area have also demonstrated visible solidarity. (At least some participating organizations did so performatively, despite unfortunate hypocrisy enabling militarism, but I’ll save those intra-movement reflections for a future post.)

Earlier this month, activists locked themselves to a military transport ship, the Cape Orlando, successfully delaying it from leaving the Port of Oakland. The ship was poised to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel, and after eventually leaving the Port of Oakland, was soon blocked and delayed again by activists in the Seattle area mobilizing at the Port of Tacoma.

This week, the Bay Area mobilized again. Over 80 participants were arrested this Thursday for blocking the bay bridge, which connects the city of San Francisco to Oakland and the rest of the bay area and carries roughly a quarter million vehicles every day.

In a car-centered transportation network, these kinds of actions can carry particular influence because they force an oblivious public to share the cost of its unfortunate ignorance. There’s no guarantee that a person’s inconvenience will ever translate to them learning what they might have previously overlooked, but blocking actions at least deny the option of casual complicity, and force public discussion impeded by propaganda-masquerading-as-news.

This week, President Biden visited San Francisco to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum. APEC is the latest among a series of international trade agreements that would extend a neoliberal economic model already discredited in 2008 that has subverted environmental and labor protections to the vagaries of international markets and a rapacious global thirst for consumption.

Thankfully, thousands of Bay Area residents turned out to try shutting down the summit. Organizations including the No to APEC Coalition and Rising Tide North America organized direct action including the bay bridge blockade, as well as actions at summit sites across downtown San Francisco. Speaking on behalf of the No to APEC Coalition, spokesperson Rhonda Ramiro said, “Those steel barriers are there to protect the 1% so they can cut more deals to make the wealthy wealthier. We're trying to make it a bit inconvenient for the attendees and hard for them to do business as usual.”

Given how destructive business as usual has become, any organized disruption represents a service to the public, and to the future.

Paid subscribers can access stories and videos from grassroots actions in over two dozen other cities around the U.S. challenging militarism at this critical point in world history.

Current events offer plenty of reasons for despair, particularly if one looks for them. But in the stalwart actions of our neighbors, we can find inspiration, as well as prolific public demonstrations of once universal commitments that many of us still share.