Palestine Tet – 45 – Doing My Duty to God and Country

Rob Prince getting into a Denver Sheriff’s van to be taken to jail

Legal defense fund – Please contribute.

1.

Front Range JVP’s Fundraising Statement

This past Sunday, a coalition of @DenverBoulderJVP and our allies put their bodies on the line to SHUT DOWN a major blvd outside the Jewish National Fund’s Global Conference for Israel to demand #CeasefireNOW!

The highway was shut down for 1.5 hrs and 15 people were arrested while 200 fellow protesters surrounded the group with prayers for peace and chanting “Ceasefire Now!” to raise awareness about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, funded by our government.

The devastation continues to increase in Gaza where an estimated 15,000 Palestinians, including over 6,000 children, have been killed. These are not just numbers. Each of them is an entire universe extinguished.

We are asking our community to support those who were arrested by giving to our legal defense fund here. For the next week, 100% of funds raised will go directly to our chapter (instead of 25% going to National JVP). This will go to ongoing legal support for these comrades, and any other individual or collective costs for past and future actions.

If you stand against genocide, please give today, spread the word, and show up to our next event. We must mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living. We will keep showing up to say NOT IN OUR NAMES until there is a ceasefire, and until Palestine is Free!

2.

Fifteen of us protesters were arrested, charged and released after nine hours as a result of the civil disobedience. Bail was generously provided by Elizabeth Epp’s Colorado Freedom Fund , a most valuable resource. Virtually all of those arrested (except myself) will need funds for legal help and that is what this blog entry is about. To contribute click on the link above “Legal Defense Fund”.

I urge those of you who can afford to do so to give generously. You can start by matching – or bettering – my $1000 contribution. I will not touch a penny of this money. It’s for the others. I’m retired and can handle the legal expenses at least as I understand them currently. Not so for the others.

Ever go to a mainstream Jewish Zionist fundraiser? They often raise tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in one sitting. It’s time we more mature (in age anyway) supporters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Not In Your Name show that we can and will match those contributions. Of course, give what you can …

Now is the time. No excuses, no bullshit.

These young folk are out there doing what many of us should have been doing long ago but didn’t have the moxy to do so. As is known, many, nay most of these JVP folk are living far more frugally than their parents. They have talent, compassion, extraordinarily good anti-racist politics, ie, already, great worldly experience none of which is marketable. Now is a good time, an opportunity to make amends for lives of gluttony, unbridled materialism, narcissism and psychologically studying navals.

It’s never too late!

3.

Having just past my 79th birthday last month (November 6), I qualify easily, no questions asked, as an “old geezer” like my two companeros, Mike Wilzoch and Arnie Carter.

Most of my life I was a simple teacher – not a “professor”, nor “a senior lecturer”, just a teacher. I never aspired to be anything else and quit the field only after forgetting what I was talking about in a lecture at the age of 70, now nine years ago. I had to ask the class to get me back on track. They were very kind; I finished the lecture, went to the dean and put in for retirement and never looked back.

Having become a Marxist in my early twenties, I never have abandoned that way of looking at the world, at history, where the world is heading and what might be done about it. My “awakening” concerning the actual relationship between Israel and the Palestinians came during the 1967 Middle East War when I happened to be, not in the NYC of my birth, but in Tunisia where I was serving in the Peace Corps. It was my Tunisian students who first explained in credible terms the “Palestinian narrative”; I will be forever grateful to them.

With that memory in mind, there is momentum growing for a Denver City Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. It’s coming friends and from the same folks that have brought you demonstrations for a ceasefire, and an end to the U.S. supported Israeli cruel blockade of Gaza.

No surprise then that I was a part of the mix when Jewish Voice for Peace asked for volunteers to engage in civil disobedience in support of Palestine, for an immediate ceasefire of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, and against the Jewish National Fund’s holding of a major conference in downtown Denver.

Among a flood of Jewish youth, organized by Front Range Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Not In Our Name. Arnie Carter was there with Mike Wilzoch and myself – three old geezers – shutting down traffic on Speer Blvd and Champa Street, a main thoroughfare in Denver.

Getting out of jail ten hour later; A welcoming committe of Democratic Socialists of America and Colorado Representative Elisabeth Epps was there to welcome me.

And shut it down we did … with the three arthritic musketeers shortly afterwards heading off  with a dozen young Jews to Denver’s main jail where the food was terrible but the company as good as it gets for eight hours or so of bad jokes, cooking tips, political tall tails from the 1970s, some local left history – all in all a fine day of social protest, friendship, kicking the powers that be in Colorado in the shins, or perhaps, a little bit higher.

No we didn’t “shut down” the Jewish National Fund (JNF) shindig but in demonstration after demonstration, each bringing together thousands, we exposed the JNF for what it is: an integral element of Zionism’s program to ethnically cleanse Palestinians off of their land. There will be more far reaching political consequences’ to this campaign, to be discussed in future blog entries.

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Opposing War with Iraq resolution – the 2003 Denver City Council resolution opposing the Iraq War. We need another one like this

The civil disobedience was reported on Democracy Now!