Now, on our third International Day to Shut It Down for Palestine, we’ve come to a point where there is absolutely no way for the empire to hide from the will of the people. The people of the world will no longer stand by as the US and Israel continues to commit atrocities against Palestine.

Three weeks ago, I spoke about the largest protest for Palestine in US history – one that saw over 300,000 people in Washington D.C. on November 4. I spoke about the 50 thousand people who showed up in San Francisco on the same day in solidarity. I spoke about Oakland and Tacoma blocking a boat carrying weapons headed for the Israeli military, and I spoke about the countries around the world, which are cutting ties with Israel.

Since then, the movement for Palestine only continues to become greater in strength and numbers. On November 8, over 100 US congressional staffers staged a walk out in front of the US Capitol, demanding the lawmakers they work for call for a ceasefire. On November 9th, the world first SHUT IT DOWN for Palestine.

In New York City, over 100 people occupied the Black Rock lobby, demanding that the company investing in the weapon manufacturers that arm Israel. They read the names of the over 10,000 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli air strikes in the past month. Over at the New York Times, protestors occupied their headquarters, calling out the newspaper’s complicity in Israel’s murder of Palestinian journalists. Around the country and around
the world on the same day, university and high school students as well as teachers and professors staged major walkouts at their institutions, walking together courageously, even as they faced retaliation.

On November 17, the world again shut it down for Palestine. Palestine solidarity activists marched at the NYC News Corp. Conglomerate Headquarters to protest the lies told by Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Students at Harvard staged a major walkout, while plenty of universities and institutions followed suit. We saw Dock Workers in Italy block the port entrance of Salerno to show they will not support Israel’s genocide. And in these past few weeks, we’ve seen major student and worker led shut downs showing up rapidly across the globe.

This includes workers and labor unions in all different fields, such as the dock workers in Barcelona and Belgium who refused to load a ship of war materials for Israel, the trade unionists in India who resisted sending workers to Israel at the request of the Israeli Builder’s Association, the global health care workers who picket against the bombing of hospitals and the Israeli apartheid that refuses medical care to Palestinians, the UK unions and activists who set up blockades to the entrances of the manufacturing units of companies BAE systems and Elbit Systems. Columbia University grads dumping their caps and gowns as their university bans pro-Palestine students and educators and Bay Area residents who shut down the Bay Bridge.

It is these students and workers, along with artists, activists, and the global working class who win in shutting down the US war machine, not Democrats or Republicans. It is we, Sonoma County community members, who lift up the Palestinian resistance, not California senators like Alex Padilla who received nearly $31,000 from pro-Israel lobby, or Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson who refuse to stand on the right side of history. It is we who will show up here every week until we are no longer fighting for Palestinian liberation but instead are celebrating its reality.

To do this, we have to stay united in struggle. I encourage you to connect with someone here who you’ve never met before, and to find someone with a clipboard to stay informed on actions for Palestine. Now repeat after me, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”