Ceasefire now. End Israel’s Genocidal Campaign in Gaza. Notes from talk given in Raton, New Mexico. Saturday, March 30, 2024

“The crew” from the “Colfax/Las Animas Forum for Peace and Justice” in Raton, New Mexico who organized the talk I gave there “Come Learn About Palestine” at the “El Raton”,

1.

Nancy and I went to Raton, New Mexico where I gave a talk on the current U.S. funded Israeli war on Gaza. A most enjoyable and fruitful visit in every way.

Raton, New Mexico is having something of an urban revival bringing together a long history of mining and ranching folk with newcomers looking for a more affordable, sustainable,liveable place to call home. The talk I gave, took place in Raton’s renovated theater, recently  restored.

It was the opening event for the Colfaz/Las Animas Forum for Peace and Justice” that brought together these Raton “newcomers” with long standing members of Raton’s community. The audience itself, from what I could glean, was mostly long-time locals.  Although our stay in Raton was little more than 24 hours, the taste of the town that Nancy and I got suggests the chemistry for such a welding of diverse interests is there as is the will to bring the town back to its former dynamism.

Worth watching.

2.

In 2020, the population of Raton, New Mexico was a bit more than 6000. As a labor organizer friend of mine noted, at one point the Raton Basin was home to some 100 mines, now all closed down. Like many a mining town in the West, especially in the states I am more familiar with, Colorado, New Mexico, mining towns are/were boom-and-bust operations. When the mines are humming along producing whatever – coal, gold, silver, tin, uranium – they flourish and then, when for whatever reason, the mines close down, as they did in Raton in the late 1980s, early 1990s, the town economy collapses or pretty close to that. And then the struggle begins … how to revitalize the place. Here in Colorado, some like Central City, Idaho Springs, even Lafayette and Louisville either become tourist centers trying to cash in on the town’s more vibrant past, or suburbs, bed room communities of larger metropolitan areas.

Many – perhaps, even most mining towns – simply die, become ghost towns.

I would venture to guess that is the fate of more of them, than those that actually survive and re-invent themselves. Nor is this the fate of only old mining towns. Small towns all over the place that lose their economic foundation, be it mining, or manufacturing – as is the fate of Fairbury, Nebraska from nearby where my in-laws hail or Ovid, Colorado that lost its sugar beat processing plant – all face similar the similar dilemmas of “what now?” “how can we re-invent ourselves”? Meanwhile the social ills of dying rural communities – small cities and towns continue to plague Raton: poverty,  drug and alcoholism addiction, spiked crime rates and youth who leave after high school … all the usual social conseqeunces of the collapse of rural-based economies.

Dennis Duckett and Dianne Fleming, Raton residents They are in Sugarite Canyon State Park which hugs the New Mexico-Colorado state line. We’d just crossed over for a few steps into Colorado from New Mexico.

Many such towns turn to the same dead end shallow solutions: tourism, a generally unstabile actually mercurial form of development. It seems Raton is toying with this idea at the present time too, in terms of sustainable development.

But there are rays of light as well,

But it will take much more than good will to turn Raton around – a major federal and/or state funded plan done in conjunction and coordination with Raton’s citizenry – to pull it off. With concentrated state and/or federal funding, a sustainable development plan drawn up by Raton residents, its revitalization is possible. And not only for Raton.

It would help a great deal if, on a national level, the swollen military budget can be cut, our addiction to foreign wars curbed with funds used to build weapons, providing Israel with the means to commit genocide in Gaza and source military bases can be redirected to provide the financial umph necessary to revitalize our rural communities, be they Raton, Fairbury Nebraska or Ovid and Sugar City, Colorado.

If I write all this, it is in large measure because of the potential for sustainable development I witnessed from our Raton visit.

3.

Notes from my talk. I never strictly follow my own scripts in giving talks … but the notes I provide below are pretty much what I shared with audience .

Remarks of Rob Prince/”Come Learn About Palestine” – Raton, New Mexico. March 30, 2024.

Glad to be here.

1. Raton ..

Some miles to the east – the Folsom point archeological site. It is the type site for the Folsom tradition, a Paleo-Indian cultural sequence dating to between 11000 BC and 10000 BC. The Folsom site was excavated in 1926 and found to have been a marsh-side kill site or camp where 32 bison had been killed using distinctive tools, known as Folsom points.

Ludlow Massacre – across Raton Pass just north of Trinidad, one of history’s most dramatic confrontations between capital and labor — the so-called Ludlow Massacre — took place at the mines of the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I).

The old and the new Raton – hope they merge into one community; takes work, attention.

Need to cut the military budget to refocus federal monies away from war making abroad and for overall sustainable development in the USA with a special emphasis on rural-small town development.

2. Read Annelle Sheline’s – Why I resigned from the State Department.

• Excellent summary of where U.S. funded Israeli war against Gaza is at – and the U.S. role in this
• A former State Department insider is accusing her government – our government – of complicity in genocide
• Her remarks suggest  a whole different narrative  than what we are hearing both from the Biden Administration and the mainstream media
• Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and doing it with U.S. funding, weapons, intelligence and direction.

Some quotes from Sheline’s resignation letter:

“I can no longer continue what I was doing. I hope that my resignation can contribute to the many efforts to push the administration to withdraw support for Israel’s war, for the sake of the 2 million Palestinians whose lives are at risk and for the sake of America’s moral standing in the world.”

“Since Hamas’ attack on October 7, Israel has used American bombs in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people — 13,000 of them children — with countless others buried under the rubble, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israel is credibly accused of starving the 2 million people who remain, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to food; a group of charity leaders warns that without adequate aid, hundreds of thousands more will soon likely join the dead.”

“However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible. Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities, I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State.”

“Across the federal government, employees like me have tried for months to influence policy, both internally and, when that failed, publicly. My colleagues and I watched in horror as this administration delivered thousands of precision-guided munitions, bombs, small arms and other lethal aid to Israel and authorized thousands more, even bypassing Congress to do so. We are appalled by the administration’s flagrant disregard for American laws that prohibit the US from providing assistance to foreign militaries that engage in gross human rights violations or that restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.”

3. An immediate ceasefire is the most important stop that can be taken to stop the bleeding.

How Palestine benefits:

Obvious – for the Palestinians it would freeze the bloodshed, result in the distribution of humanitarian aid, impossible in the midst of a military conflict. It would provide the basis for Gaza Palestinians to return to their homes throughout Gaza, begin the process of of healing the wounds and rebuilding Gaza as a livable place.

It would also put an end to Israeli plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, to expell them into the Sinai Desert and end any plans for Zionist expansionism, already well developed, into Gaza.

How Israel benefits:

Israel’s massive military campaign into Gaza is not going well at all, either militarily or politically. It is a mistake to think that ceasefire would only benefit Hamas or the Palestinians in general.

The invasion is hurting Israel domestically and internationally.

– the war has created several hundred thousand internal Israeli refugees who have been displace both from Israeli regions near Gaza and in the north, by the border of Southern Lebanon. These internal refugees have been moved to more central Israeli areas (and in the W. Bank); they have become both a great political burden (what to do with them?) and a financial burder of the first order.

– there are reports of of exponentially high levels of PTSD among Israel military personnel (and also civilians)and other forms of trauma among the Israeli population. Large numbers of people are fleeing the country with no intention of returning, either to Cyprus, Europe or the USA.

– from a miitary point of view, the war is not going well. Israel has failed to achieve its goals (eliminating Hamas and/or its leadership, expelling the Palestinian population in its entirety from Gaza).

Concerning the United States:

Both genericly and in terms of the Bide Administration’s re-election chances, ending the fighting is imperative.

As a result of its total support for the Israeli war effort – its claims of concern for Palestinians civilians aside – ending the fighting is an imperative.

At a Denver mosque, comment from a Kuwaiti friend: came to America “to fulfill a dream”. He’s leaving, cannot under any circumstances live in the country fueling Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

As a result of its support for Israel, US global prestige is plummeting. Collapse of prestige translated into a loss of influence. Washington’s ability to dominate any post war negotiations is collapsing as well.

End to end the fighting. A ceasefire is the first step towards the complex process of peacemaking that most follow. Every day the war continues, prospects for peace sour that much more

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One of many initiatives to get the U.S. Congressional delegation to support a ceasefire. Although they shed crocodile tears for Gaza civilians, the delegation refuses to support a ceasefire, including U.S. Congressman Neguse (Boulder, County)