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As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.
But they ask – and rightly so – what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted.
Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.
Martin Luther King, Jr. |
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Folks,
In the last 48 hours, thousands of Democrats have gone on the record to condemn political violence.
Barack Obama said, “There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy.”
Joe Biden said, “There is no place in America for this kind of violence — for any violence. Ever. Period. No exception. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”
Both of these statements are telling, and not for the reasons either of them think.
There’s no place for violence in OUR democracy, in AMERICA, they say.
But unrelenting violence carried out against millions of Palestinians is fine. Or that’s what we’re left to conclude.
There’s a new report out from The Lancet, a British medical journal, in which experts and researchers have estimated the ultimate death toll in Gaza is on track to reach 186,000.
That number is shocking to many, but not to me. It’s exactly the number you’d expect to see after nine months of this, nonstop: |
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From the beginning, Israel has used hunger and disease as weapons of war, choking off the supply of food and shutting down electricity and water.
Israel has repeatedly and intentionally bombed hospitals and ambulances, and withheld or destroyed medical supplies – multiplying their cruelty by forcing countless children to endure amputations without anesthesia.
For nine straight months Israel has blown up apartment buildings, schools, and any remaining infrastructure to turn all of Gaza into a flattened wasteland.
They herded the survivors into Rafah, forcing them into crowded tent cities. And then they bombed the tents.
And yet our government has continued to supply the bombs – many of them made by Boeing, one of my opponent’s largest lifetime corporate donors.
Those bombs have been paid for by funds appropriated by Congress – funds my opponent voted for while pocketing tens of thousands from AIPAC and the American war machine.
Then they tried to hide the scale of Israel’s barbarity by passing a bill that officially discredits the already undercounted deaths by the Gaza Health Ministry.
For nine straight months Democrats have funded, facilitated, and cheered on this genocide. They want to condemn political violence? They are the PURVEYORS of political violence.
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This didn’t start with Gaza.
Trump, Biden, and much of Congress engage in openly violent and hateful rhetoric and actions as a matter of course.
We are shocked at incidents like what happened in Pennsylvania. But are we really surprised?
Have we not created a powder keg of war, animosity and poverty, driven by the corruption of the ruling class that seeks to divide us and divert our attention while they steal our wages and our dignity?
What happened at that rally is to be condemned. As a peace activist I abhor and oppose ALL violence – especially violence perpetrated by the imperialists and the war machine.
The violent and hateful actions and rhetoric of our political leaders has consequences. We cannot expect otherwise.
As long as Democrats OR Republicans hold all the levers of power, incidents like this weekend’s shooting will likely result in increasing the power of the authoritarian surveillance state and a diminished capacity to criticize our government.
In solidarity,
Jason |
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