"Pro-Palestine protesters disrupted the largest one-night fundraiser in presidential campaign history on Thursday" featuring Biden, Obama and Clinton, moderated by Stephen Colbert & "with tickets costing up to half a million dollars each".
Biden must stop US complicity in genocide. Netanyahu has been called the Israeli Trump. Why bother voting Democrats if that's the outcome. Any unconditional support must stop now.
"The event disruption was organized by a coalition including Adalah Justice Project, Palestinian Youth Movement and Jewish Voice for Peace and the Sunrise Movement.
Meanwhile, outside the event, thousands took to the streets to protest President Biden’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza."
"You said you’re “haunted by the final social media post of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25.”
You quote him:
➡️ “Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”"
“Following nearly six months of unrelenting Israeli assault on occupied Gaza, it is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my finding, 'The Anatomy of a Genocide.'"
"History teaches us that genocide is a process, not a single act. It starts with the dehumanization of a group as other and the denial of that group’s humanity, and ends with the destruction of the group in all or in part.
The dehumanization of Palestinians as a group is the hallmark of their history of ethnic cleansing, dispossession and apartheid.”"
The news is filled with talk of the #massacre in #Russia. It is of course a horrible crime.
Why are not the daily massacres of #Ukrainians by Russia called "massacres". Russia is perpetrating horrendous war crimes daily by massacring innocents and should be decried as such.
Today in Labor History March 21, 1937: Palm Sunday, cops killed 19 unarmed men, women and children marching in a protest in Ponce, Puerto Rico. They injured another 200 civilians. The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized the march to commemorate the abolition of slavery in 1873 and to protest the imprisonment of the party’s leaders by the U.S. The police used Thompson submachine guns, rifles and pistols, shooting marchers in the back, during the Ponce Massacre. A commission placed the blame for the massacre on the U.S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship. However, no one, including Winship, nor any of the shooters, were ever prosecuted or punished.
Today in Labor History March 18, 1871: The Paris Commune began on this date. It started with resistance to occupying German troops and the power of the bourgeoisie. They governed from a feminist and anarcho-communist perspective, abolishing rent and child labor, and giving workers the right to take over workplaces abandoned by the owners. The revolutionaries took control of Paris and held on to it for two months, until it was brutally suppressed. During Semaine Sanglante, the nationalist forces slaughtered 15,000-20,000 Communards. Hundreds more were tried and executed or deported.
Today in Labor History March 16, 1968: Up to 500 Vietnamese villagers were slaughtered by U.S. troops in the My Lai Massacre. The story was broken by investigative journalist Sy Hersch, who also covered Watergate, the secret US bombing of Cambodia, CIA domestic spying within the US, and the US torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. More recently, he has written articles showing that Syrian rebel forces, not the Assad regime, contrary to US propaganda, were responsible for the sarin gas attack in Ghouta. And that the US, with Norwegian collaboration, blew up the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany (also contrary to US propaganda).
Today in Labor History March 14, 1978: Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Litani, a seven-day invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. They were retaliating for the Coastal Road massacre, near Tel Aviv, by Lebanon-based Palestinian militants. Up to 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters and civilians died, as did 20 Israeli soldiers. The conflict displaced 250,000 Lebanese civilians. The United Nations Security Council adopted 2 resolutions calling on Israel to immediately withdraw from Lebanon.
Today in Labor History March 12, 1967: Suharto took power from Sukarno in Indonesia. He ruled Indonesia as an authoritarian, kleptocratic dictator for 31 years, and is widely considered one of the most brutal and corrupt dictators of the 20th century. During that time, he amassed a fortune worth $38 billion. Suharto rose to power under Sukarno during the 1965-1966 genocide. During that ostensibly anti-Communist purge, Suharto’s troops murdered 1-3 million communists, labor activists, peasants and ethnic minorities. During that genocide, he received support military and economic from both the U.S. and the U.K. In 1974, the Suharto regime, with approval of U.S. president Gerald Ford, invaded East Timor, killing over 200,000 Timorese. Another 75,000-200,000 died from starvation and disease. The current Indonesian government is considering awarding him the posthumous honor of National Hero.
Today in Labor History March 11, 1858: The Great Indian Mutiny, also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, ended with massacres by the British. 6,000 British troops died in the fighting. However, at least 800,000 Indians died in the fighting and from the famines and epidemics that resulted.
Today in Labor History March 7, 1932: Over 3,000 people, led by the United Auto Workers, marched on the main Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Workers on the Ford Hunger March were demanding that laid off colleagues be rehired. They also demanded a slow-down of the assembly lines and an end to the evictions of unemployed workers from their homes. Marchers carried banners saying "Give Us Work," "We Want Bread Not Crumbs," and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor." During the protests, police opened fire with machine guns, killing 4 and injuring 60. A fifth worker died later from his wounds. The Unemployed Council (part of the Communist Party) also supported the march.
Today in Labor History March 5, 1917: Members of the IWW went on trial in Everett, Washington for the Everett Massacre, which occurred on November 5, 1916. In reality, they were the victims of an assault by a mob of drunken, vigilantes, led by Sheriff McRae. The IWW members had come to support the 5-month long strike by shingle workers. When their boat, the Verona, arrived, the Sheriff asked who their leader was. They replied, “We are all leaders.” Then the vigilantes began firing at their boat. They killed 12 IWW members and 2 of their own, who they accidentally shot in the back. Before the killings, 40 IWW street speakers had been taken by deputies to Beverly Park, where they were brutally beaten and run out of town. In his “USA” trilogy, John Dos Passos mentions Everett as “no place for the working man.” And Jack Kerouac references the Everett Massacre in his novel, “Dharma Bums.”