Image by Duncan Shaffer.
MoveOn and the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) hosted a spirited rally and march here in Seattle, on July 26, with the theme of fighting back against Trump and greedy billionaires such as Jeff Bezos (the creepy tech mogul who attended Trump’s inaugural before dropping $50 million dollars to rent the entire city of Venice, Italy for his wedding).
Several dynamic speakers and bureaucrats talked about the cruelty of Trump’s attacks on immigrants–and his cuts to food assistance programs–and finally worked the crowd of more than 200 people into a near-frenzy of “Stand Up! Fight Back!”
With all these fiery speeches about fighting back against Trump, however, there was not a single word spoken about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trapped in Gaza (the world’s largest concentration camp) being systematically starved to death, at this very moment, by the genocidal army of the U.S. colony in the Middle East.
As the speeches concluded, and the march assembled, one troublemaker (ie: me) shouted to the woman with the microphone: “Can you say a word to remind everyone of the need to speak out against the genocide in Gaza? Hundreds of thousands of our sisters and brothers are being starved by our government!”
I think a lot of people heard me–because I had waited until the best moment to speak. A few people turned and began to speak to me, but I could not hear what they were saying. I think some were thanking me for speaking out–and others were telling me to shut the fuck up. I responded to someone by shouting: “you’re silent because you’re under the thumb of the Democratic Party”. That must have stung.
A moment later a young man introduced himself to me as some high mucky-muck from the Washington State Democratic Party–and asked me to please stop trashing the Democratic Party. He told me that the Democratic Party was being improved and would soon become a force for good in the world. I reminded this person that his was a party of genocide. He brushed that aside. After all, he reasoned, nothing is perfect. He and his fellow dreamers had gotten some subcommittee of a subcommittee to pass some token resolution about Palestine that nobody will ever read or know about. He told me that he and I were “allies”. I replied that we were not.
This guy’s job was to make sure that none of the speakers at this “fight back against Trump” rally uttered forbidden words such as “Palestine”, “Gaza” or “Genocide”.
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