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?
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.
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.
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:
