What Will Be The Mood Killer At Your Thanksgiving?

What will be the mood killer at your Thanksgiving table this year?

Will someone acknowledge that the myth of this colonial holiday is based on attempted genocide against the indigenous people of this continent? And that many of them hold a National Day of Mourning on this occasion?

Will someone else bring up the connection to the settler colonial project in Palestine and the ongoing attempted genocide in Gaza?

https://youtu.be/GJps2koIFNM?si=HtSWdqdiY7uHVjyI

Will the generations split because young people get it about Israel’s long oppression of the indigenous people of Palestine while older people don’t?

Will anyone revive last year’s argument over the now nearly defunct proxy war in Ukraine which failed to defeat or even weaken Russia militarily or economically despite the U.S. alone spending nearly a trillion dollars?

Put another way, will the people with stock portfolios and pension funds invested in corporations who profit from building weapons that slaughter civilians stand with humanity or attend to their bottom line?

Will the generations who were heavily indoctrinated to support Israel right or wrong listen to Gen Z rising up and rejecting white supremacy and racially motivated violence against Palestinians?

Maybe you just wanted to have a harvest feast with family and friends with no lies about the history of the holiday and no talk of current events.

https://twitter.com/jesse_jett/status/1727413864625823859

Because silence in the face of genocide is easier; it doesn’t run the risk of offending anybody and is palatable to most. But do you want the children in your family to grow up thinking that the thing to do when a genocide is unfolding is…freeze? Look the other way and say to yourself or to anyone who asks, I see nothing.

This count was current as of Nov 7 but by now the number of children killed exceeds 5,000 — and it does not even include the many children whose bodies are still trapped under the rubble from Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza. 

Or maybe you’ll eat some food, have some real talk, and then head out the next day to help shut it down for Palestine?

Here’s a website where you can find a national list of Black Friday BDS events.

In Maine where I’m located on unceded Wabanaki land:

Shut It Down For Palestine Roundup

I was able to attend two of the many, many actions in solidarity with Palestine in my state this week.

On Friday evening I joined 150 at a demonstration held outside the state capitol building fence, sponsored by the newly minted Maine Coalition for Palestine (which I’ve now joined). Truly excellent speeches by well-informed activists were interspersed with chants like “Free, free Palestine” and a whole lot of honking from passing motorists. The crowd assembled was quite different from the group I stood with about a month ago at a same time, same place demo. Not nearly as many people of color or Arabic-speaking college students this time. Maybe they have peeled off to join demos nearer to them in our sprawling, sparsely populated state? The crowd last Friday had more oldsters but was predominately white 20 and 30 somethings from coalition organizations like the PSL* and Student for Justice in Palestine.

One of my old friends who has done social work with children in Palestine told another friend who was there of her desire to get arrested opposing Israel’s genocide, and to spend Christmas Day in jail. We’ll see where that goes.

All Topsham Nov 18 photos by Mary Beth Sullivan

On Saturday we had our regular monthly antiwar meetup with a statewide coalition that now includes the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), *Party for Socialism & Liberation Maine, Libertarian Party of Maine, People’s Party of Maine, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Veterans for Peace – National, and United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). 

We began the monthly event over a year ago with a focus on objecting to funding a proxy war on Russia, but soon expanded to include a robust set of demands mostly borrowed from UNAC.

I’m glad we did that and especially that we held on to the demand about Israel (when I was on the Jimmy Dore Show in April he read out our demands and commented, “Strong words!” about that one). 

https://youtu.be/v3NQmgnp-EM?si=SNeQSSAfZnNqNyjL&t=98

I’m glad because our monthly gathering on Saturday had clearly morphed into a Palestine solidarity demonstration with flags, kufiyahs, and messaging around stopping the genocide in Gaza. There were 30 of us if you count Beans the dog, who is a regular, and ages ranged from 90+ years to 17 months. Our chanting wasn’t as loud as the Augusta group’s but it was just as passionate. With an anti-imperialist perspective, it’s possible to oppose all the empire’s wars without the contradictions that the two corporate parties run into when they brand each war as D or R depending on who’s in the White House.


Shared on @pslmaine’s Insta feed with other photos from Nov 17 Shut it down event in Augusta

One of the best signs I saw in Augusta called out all of Maine’s congressional delegation which includes two Democrats (Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree), a Republican (Susan Collins), and an Independent (Angus King). All are supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza with our tax dollars and Mainers are pissed. All have failed both at representing their constituents and at being decent human beings.

Stay tuned for lots more actions in the days to come!

Can’t get out to a demo? Maybe boycott some of these brands doing business with Zionist occupiers.