Notes – Remarks, Rob Prince – in Denver Municipal Court. June 12, 2024

Front Range Jewish Voice for Peace Civil Disobedience. Denver, Colorado. December 3, 2023

(What follows below is the written statement I handed to the court. The spoken remarks were much shorter as was appropriate to the situation).

Notes – Remarks, Rob Prince – in Court. June 12, 2024

Your Honor, Members of the Court, Observers …

Thank you for this opportunity to say a few words to you in response to this verdict.

1. On December 3, 2023, I participated in a civil disobedience action organized by the young and growing chapter of Front Range Jewish Voice for Peace. In what was a well organized effort, 30 or 40 of us stopped traffic on Speer Blvd, I believe for approximately an hour.

We were protesting the holding of a major national conference in Denver of the Jewish National Fund, an organization that for more than a century has been involved in expropriating Palestinian lands and property, in many cases completely bulldozing homes and settlements as a part of its program of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland.

We were also there to call on the Biden Administration to call for a permanent cease-fire between the Israeli Defense Forces and different Palestinian resistance groups of which Hamas was just one, and for Israel to end its genocidal attack on Gaza, withdraw its troops, permit the reconstruction of Gaza and to call for a permanent resolution of the crisis.

These goals remain as valid today as they were on December 3.

2. Concerning the charges made against me…

I admit to having refused to obey a police order to disperse and, along with fellow protesters to have blocked traffic.

Concerning the third charge, that I was in possession of a deadly weapon – I must say that is a bit over the top.

The city attorney knows this and so do I.

3. Civil disobedience. Nothing is more American than apple pie than civil disobedience.

In participating in the December 3 civil disobedience, I entered into a fine democratic tradition in our country going back to the Boston Tea Party, the Abolitionist Movement prior to the Civil War, and virtually every social movement of the past century to make our country better, fairer, more democratic – the movement to insure women to vote, the great civil rights movements of the 1960s, peace movements from Vietnam to Iraq and against the nuclear arms race.

4. Your Honor, I grew up in a loving Conservative Jewish extended family in New York City.
It is from this family, this community that my views on society, on what it means to be human developed and certainly as a result of this upbringing that I decided sometime in my early 20s of what I wanted to do: to be a teacher.

My parents were not thrilled with this decision but I never regretted it. To the contrary. All my working life I was a simple teacher. It is all I’ve ever been, all I ever wanted to be.

Your honor …

Judaism speaks of ten truly holy people – 9 of them are rabbis. The 10th was secular, Janus Korczak by name, a doctor and author who ran a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw from 1911 to 1942.

Although he had the opportunity to abandon his charges and escape capture by the Nazis, he refused and stayed with the kids he taught, walking them with dignity to their deaths in Auschwitz. He would not abandon his students and he would be very displeased with me for abandonning these young Jewish peace militants.

I simply could not let these young Jewish progressive activists stand alone on Speer and Champa. I went with them in solidarity, so that they would know there are older Denver Jews – alta kockers for a cease-fire – who “get it” – who lovethem, believe in their work, their profound humanity,– and militancy for peace. This applies not just to the JVP people but to all those now working for peace with justice in the Colorado Palestine Coalition.

So I stand with them … for Palestine, for a renewed Judaism that rejects all claims to being “chosen” “better” “superior” and all such racist nonsense. We are all, all of humanity, chosen. We Jews have no monopoly on this. The sooner we understand this, the better.

Your honor, I had no choice but to engage in civil disobedience – Janus Korczak and my ancestors from far away places with -to many of our ears strange sounding names – Prienai, Lithuania, Grodno, Belarus, Bialystok, Poland – told me so. And when Korczak and the ancestors speak from the grave what else can I do but listen?

with Maggie Lewis in front of the Lindsay-Flanagan Courthouse. June 12, 2024