To the editor:
May this message meet you in solidarity. As we come together to take action, we are trembling at the same time. There is so much pain, trauma, and tenderness at this moment, and it is challenging to find the right words to respond to it. We hope you read this and remember that humans who love you wrote it.
We are your neighbors, farmers, caregivers, friends. We pray that you are finding ways to hold, support, and hear each other during this time. We have been in community—in protest and prayer—these last days. We have been educating ourselves about the conditions that have led us to what we are witnessing today. We have been deeply introspective so that we may actually feel the gravity of what is happening here.
We mourn the deaths of each and every being. We grieve and are enraged as the Israeli government wages a genocidal war on the people of Palestine with the full financial and political support of the United States government. We grieve for the land taken from Palestinian tending, the olive trees cut down, the land burnt, fenced and walled, the air heavy with contamination from bombs (many manufactured in the U.S.), and the ongoing contamination and deprivation of water to the Palestinian people.
“Our federal taxes contribute $3 billion yearly in military and economic aid to Israel. Over $200 million of that money is spent fighting the uprising of Palestinian people who are trying to end the military occupation of their homeland. Israeli soldiers fire tear gas canisters made in america into Palestinian homes and hospitals, killing babies, the sick, and the elderly…Encouraging your congresspeople to press for a peaceful solution in the Middle East, and for recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people, is not altruism, it is survival. ”
— AUDRE LORDE, OBERLIN COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS, MAY 29, 1989
That was in 1989. Today, according to the Congressional Research Service, “the United States has provided Israel $150 billion (current, or non inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. At present, almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance.”
We call on our community members to take action in the following ways:
1. Contact your government officials DAILY — demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel, an immediate ceasefire, and an end to the occupation of Palestine.
2. Educate yourselves on what is happening, centering the voices of Palestinians.
3. Join your communities that gather in organizing and protest.
Solidarity until Palestine is free.
We are asking you, in the face of unimaginable tragedy, to take up a practice of fierce compassion. We know that to do so is no small feat and requires deep courage. But we, your community, believe in our collective strength to do this.
Finally, we leave you with the words of Palestinian poet and activist, Suheir Hammad: “Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water.
And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and you refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.”
Robin Chadwell, of High Spirit Community Farm
Lesley Eshelman, Great Barrington
Abi Childs, Berkshires DSA Chair
Sunder Ashni, Mumbet’s Freedom Farm
Jennifer Maas, Cheshire
Kamaar Taliaferro, Pittsfield
Anaelisa Vanegas, Manos Unidas Co-op
Kristina Cardot, Corazonidos Community School
Joe Scully, Lee
John Prusinski, former Berkshires DSA Co-chair
Hunter Pratt, Cheshire
Marina Fortier, Cheshire
Maddie Elling, West Stockbridge
Abe Hunrichs, West Stockbridge
Hugo Wasserman, Housatonic
Sara Wallach, Great Barrington
Hannah Walker, Housatonic
Mae Whaley, Housatonic
Geneva Gray, Great Barrington
Alejandro Hernandez Chavez, Great Barrington
Clemente Sajquiy, Housatonic
Rebecca Strout, Pittsfield
Julia Keenan, Great Barrington
Michael Vincent Bushy, Pittsfield
Honora Toole, Great Barrington
Cara Petricca, Cheshire
Hedley Stone, Richmond
Sarah Kate Hartt, Great Barrington
Becca Litwin, Monterey
Sean Stanton, Great Barrington
