Report Back from the Gaza Freedom March - 2/21/10 Berkeley 7 PM

Report Back from the Gaza Freedom March

A presentation by Alan Goodman

Sunday, February 21st at 7:00 pm,  Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar Street in Berkeley (at Bonita)

Alan Goodman was a participant in the Gaza Freedom March on December 31, 2009, in Cairo, and covered this historic event for Revolution newspaper.

Alan's slideshow- presentation illustrates and brings to life the critical situation for the people of Gaza one year after Israel’s massacre. It highlights the importance of the Gaza Freedom March, in breaking the siege of Gaza.

This presentation paints a vivid picture of challenges of persevering with the mission of the march in Egypt after Egyptian authorities banned the marchers from going to Gaza – including the "great debates" among the participants over whether to accept an offer from the Egyptian government to allow 100 of the 1300+ marchers into Gaza as a humanitarian mission.

And it paints a living picture of "everyday people" from around the world who, at great risk and sacrifice, went on the march.

Based on interviews with dozens of participants – some of whom have been to Gaza recently – Alan Goodman’s report-back from the Gaza Freedom March paints a living picture of the situation faced by the people of Gaza.

And, from the perspective of a reporter from Revolution newspaper (revcom.us), Alan’s presentation poses important questions about the global forces behind the blockade of Gaza, and the oppression of the Palestinian people.Bring your toughest questions about the situation of the Palestinian people, and the state of Israel! Q&A / discussion to follow presentation.                                     

Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists
1924 Cedar Street in Berkeley (at Bonita)

For information call: 510-684-8270. $10-15 at the door, sliding scale students & unemployed, no one turned away for lack of funds. Co-sponsored by the BFUU Peace & Social Justice Committee, Oakland Educational Association Peace & Justice Caucus, and Revolution Book.

The Gaza Freedom March: A Call to the World Part I:

The Gaza Freedom March: Part I: Locked Down in Cairo - in REVOLUTION newspaper

by Alan Goodman

At precisely 10 am on December 31, 2009, a dozen or so "tourists" moved swiftly into eight lanes of traffic in the middle of a main thoroughfare through the center of Cairo, Egypt. Hundreds of signs in English and Arabic emerged from suitcases and backpacks: "End the Siege!" "Free Gaza!" This was the signal. Within seconds, hundreds of other "tourists" poured into the streets to join them — the Gaza Freedom March was on! After an hour of pandemonium, security forces had managed to push the protesters to the sidewalk, where they were surrounded and detained by phalanxes of riot police for seven hours. The Gaza Freedom March, which was already front-page news in Egypt and the Middle East, became a living call to the world: Free Gaza! Read on…

video clips from my report back on Gaza Freedom March

3 clips up at www.youtube.com/alanxgoodman from the presentation I'm using for report-backs on the Gaza Freedom March.

Also, seems people are finding my talk at the Emergency Town Hall Meeting to Oppose the Massacre in Gaza last year relevant, including the arguments I made to speak to people who keep asking "but what about those Hamas rockets?"

REVOLUTION: Gaza Freedom March Issues a Call to the World

Read the article

PDF poster

On the Michael Slate Show - KPFK & Report Back at Revolution Books NYC

Talking about the Gaza Freedom March on the Michael Slate show on KPFK, Los Angeles, Friday 1/9/10. 

Report back from Gaza Freedom March - Revolution Books, New York City, Sunday 1/17/10 - 4 PM

Stories to tell!

Over the course of participating in, and covering the Gaza Freedom March for REVOLUTION, I recorded some 30 interviews with participants. Those interviews tell the stories of people who at great risk and sacrifice left their families, jobs, and countries to be part of the March. These interviews also  provide a window into the conditions and lives of the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere.

They include the experiences of the Bahrain delegation -- a doctor and a nurse who were in Gaza during the war.... the story of a woman whose husband is in Gaza, and who documented the brutal conditions and irrepressible spirit of people there last May, five months after Israel's "war" (massacre)... the experience of the a Jewish woman from the U.S. who was provoked by the Israeli-orchestrated massacre of Palestinians in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla to discover the roots of Israel in ethnic cleansing, and then to go on the "Birthright unplugged" tour and witness the situation in the West Bank... 

Photos: Above- Teachers at The American International School in Gaza stand outside their former school building last May. The building was destroyed by Israel in last year's massacre of Gaza; Right - the takeout window at Sam's Pizza in Gaza City. Credits: Linda Todd, used with permission - if reprinted please credit.

And the interviews paint a picture of our experiences here, including that of the Luxembourg delegation (10 people from a tiny country in Europe) who made it to the northern Egyptian town of Al Arish near the Gaza border and who spent their confinement there mobilizing the local population in opposition to Egypt's planned wall....with people who participated in the activities of the GFM all over Cairo

I interviewed students, political activists... people who identified their values as Christians, Muslims or Jews as motivating factors.... about why they came. The interviews shed light on why all kinds of "normal everyday" people awakened to the real situation of the Palestinian people -- experiences they had that opened their eyes... and what it was about their backgrounds that made them receptive to hearing, seeing, and thinking about the situation of the Palestinians. They show the potential for mobilizing the people of the world to support the liberation of Palestine, and to oppose the crimes of Israel and the U.S. and the whole network of oppressive power in the Middle East.

And there are different perspectives and insights on the causes of the oppression of the Palestinian people, and how that fits into a larger picture of a world of oppression and injustice.

Here's how you can help make this material available to the world:

* Post or email me (alanxgoodman@gmail.com) your suggestions on how to present this material in REVOLUTION newspaper, at revcom.us, or in other ways....
* Volunteer to transcribe one or more of these interviews.
* Volunteer to translate this material into Spanish for Revolución, or into Arabic (or other languages)
* Network / collectivize / dialog on how those of us who were part of and documented this experience in different forms can amplify its impact.
* Arrange to have me speak to your students, your activist group, your community organization, your church/mosque/synagogue, radio show, etc... including as part of group report-backs from the GFM.
* Include me on panels / forums / debates in Israel and Palestine (consult before listing me of course)
* Other ideas?

Again, feel free to post ideas here, or email me at alanxgoodman@gmail.com.

Walls

New Year's Eve, Cairo: One critical impetus for the Gaza Freedom March is the impeding move by Egypt to build a deep wall at the Gaza border that would cut off the flow of essential survival material for the people of Gaza. I’ll be writing more about the nature of this planned wall, and the terrible danger it presents based on what I’ve learned from other delegates on the March. Stopping that wall has been a demand of the Gaza Freedom March.

Right: The Egyptian mass media, even while providing somewhat sympathetic (and very prominent) coverage for the Gaza Freedom March, has been inundating the public with fears that "drugs and contraband" are going through the Gaza tunnels and endangering Egypt's security. This from a regime that has blocked any possibility of legal commerce and criminalized the transport of any goods in or out of Gaza.
* * *

Tonight, a bunch of us including a young crew from Canada are relaxing a bit in the hotel lobby, summing up the tumultuous events of the last few days, and watching one of the cable news neworks. A story comes on about the impact of global warming on the highly vulnerable country of Bangladesh – a country which is almost entirely very near sea level. A slight rise in the level of the world’s oceans, resulting from the melting of glacial and polar ice, threatens to flood much of Bangladesh – a densely populated country of 160 million people.

This particular story focused on how Bangladesh’s larger, more powerful neighbor, India, is building a wall, 2,100 miles long, to seal the border between the two countries. The high, heavily reinforced barbed wire fence is not going to keep out water, it’s being built to keep out people. Scientists are saying that some 15 million people will be displaced in low-lying regions of Bangaldesh by mid-century, and the wall is to seal them into desperate Bangladesh and out of India

When the story ended, a delegate commented with bitter insight: “Seems like the solution to everything these days is to build a wall.”

What an indicting truth! In a world that so badly needs global cooperation among people, all the capitalist system can do is build walls – to keep people out, or to keep people in. All, in one way or another, to fortify a system of grotesque inequality and brutal oppression.

* * * 

What almost nobody knows, these days, is that in a communist world, people would be able to pool their energies, creativity, and unleash the positive side of diversity and uneven development to solve the massive problems humanity faces.

As the editorial in the current issue of REVOLUTION says: “The world cries out for revolution, communist revolution which, as the Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA states, can bring  ‘a whole different way of life…in which human beings, individually and above all in their mutual interaction with each other, can throw off the heavy chains of tradition and rise to their full height and thrive in ways never before experienced, or even fully imagined.’ (Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage. A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, September 2008. See revcom.us.) A revolution to bring about this whole new era in human history is both necessary and possible. And we have, in Bob Avakian, the leadership we need to advance on this path…"

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Links: Global Warming: Catastrophe from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal | Excerpt from Raymond Lotta webcast: "The Elephant in the Room: Can Anything Short of Revolution Solve the Environmental Crisis?"