 All liberation struggles are connected, not one of us is free until we're all free. Palestinian women have historically been at the forefront of the national struggle against the colonial occupation, apartheid and genocide. Palestinian women and children are deliberately murdered in an attempt to once and for all erase Palestine to prevent the possibility of a future for its people. This is a deliberate tactic of colonial domination, much like the genocide and forced sterilization of indigenous peoples of America at the hands of the U.S. government. All liberation struggles are connected. An injury to one is an injury to all. Emphasis on one does not diminish our commitment to another. In fact, if we really want to gain ground as a united force, as people, it's absolutely essential that we engage in these struggles because we need everyone. We're not going to survive if our movement excludes or even ignores targeted oppression. So today we salute women and our role in the struggle. We recognize that our commitment to Palestine is enhanced, not diminished by our commitment to women's liberation as it is by our commitment to all oppressed genders and nations. And today, we're going to hear from many women and their experience in these struggles. And we're going to make lots and lots of noise, like we have been, okay, we keep doing it. And then we'll close out with some announcements about upcoming events to keep the movement strong, to keep our feet on the path and move forward towards a liberated Palestine, liberation for women and oppressed genders, and all of the oppressed people of the world. Thank you. So first up, we're going to hear from Jordana. Assalamualaikum. A young Palestinian girl decided that she wanted to go out to dinner with her big sister, a senior in high school, and most importantly, a holder of a driver's license. The big sister drove the little sister downtown, where they enjoyed themselves for a couple of hours before heading back to their car. While they were walking to the parking lot, the little sister noticed a middle-aged white man behind them. When he saw her look, he pulled a bandana up over his face and reached for something conspicuous in his coat pocket. Little sister pulled big sister and they both started running. And to their horror, the man started running too. They were chased to their car, where they were lucky enough to get in and peel out before the man could catch up to them. They saw him chasing after their car in the rearview mirror. They did not sleep that night. Instead crying in the arms of their mother, they thanked God for their fortune of being alive as young Palestinian women. And then they came to school. And a teacher heard. And that teacher was me because this is not happening in faraway places. This is happening here. Here. Three weeks ago. Shame. The domestic terrorist Jason Eaton had his court hearing today for his attempted murder of three Palestinian students in December. These were some of the things that people here said about him in December. Real American patriots. He did a good job. Thank you for eliminating Islam's terror. Terror is your rage. To prevent people's right to protest, parts of New Jersey are closing roads and installing checkpoints. Like what's happening in the West Bank. The New York City subway has become militarized. The same military robots that are being used against Palestinians are being used here. In all of our major American cities and on our borders. The same surveillance technology used by Israel is used by our government here. There is lead in our sacred water and there are PCBs in our sacred air. And we expect our children to outrun racist domestic terrorists and then come to school to run high fight their way through school. We deserve better. So one more time I ask you, where is your, where is it? Children deserve better and our children are seeing what it means to hold power. What example are we setting for them? Are we going to show them what it means to be silent? We cannot isolate ourselves and only worry about ourselves and try to ignore this until it goes away because it is here and it is there and it affects all of us. The notion of self care is deeply colonial. Collective trauma cannot be healed in isolation. Collective trauma must be healed in community. To reach out to others, anger tells us to take action. Our emotions are wisdom. Let our grief help us find community. Let our rage help us tear this fear on International Women's Day. My sister is one literal most of you figurel. I beg you to lean into your sacred feminine rage. We are powerful together. Next up we have hello, hello, hello community. My name is Farine. I use she, her pronouns and I was invited to have a heartfelt moment with y'all tonight. As a black woman who has somehow survived 42 years in this country, I can't help but constantly be in reflection with Palestine, not wake up each day when you brush your teeth and actually have water that can run through your system or food on your table. How are you not always in unity with Palestine? And when I think about why people are being complacent, why people aren't being outraged because if you are not outraged, you are not. Attention, because this thing that is a month old, a year old, we are 45 plus years and watching and more, right, 75 years, though the narrative, the fucking president of this country wants to continue acting like October 7th was the first time that something happened so painful, bullshit, because Malcolm X once said, right, in America there is not someone who is so disrespected, unsupported and not loved like a black woman. And I found myself thinking this morning, what would it be like to have a conversation with a Palestinian woman? Are you also the person that is the most disrespected, unprotected and unloved? What does it look like? I know me, I wake up, I walk through this world with black skin. There's a target on my body every day. What does it feel like for a Palestinian woman to know you are the target? Because we are given superpowers like to breathe life into this country and a gift that they had no choice to say I want or don't want, they're literally taking them out to erase the community. That's what is genocide. That is what is genocide. And I'm like, how do they do this every day? Waking up knowing you are the number one target. I'm haunted with an image I saw 24 hours ago, a mother holding her dead child, wrapped in a blanket, still showing up and do what mothers let me do, trying their best to ease their discomfort even though there's no longer a heartbeat. How can anyone in this country talk about getting fired about row versus wade or abortion or what people are doing with our bodies when literally across the ocean, these women have a target on their back 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Do you know what that does to your mind, heart and collective spirit? I know because that's what it feels like to be black here in Vermont, so I'm trying my best to lean in and to empathize and to understand how violent and messed up this is. And the bigger problem is as a storyteller, I'm a storyteller, we have a government right here in this community that is doing dangerous single narratives that is trying to dim light and play down what is going on. I know that because when former director Tyisha Green started here in the Burlington community across the bridge, when she said, I stand with Palestine, she was told, do not say that, you will be seen as anti-Semitic. And that was three plus years ago, so I would a council president and a council pass a vote for apartheid because they've been trying to block this for years. That is not okay. So it takes us and it takes this revolution. We got to keep showing up. We got to keep showing up because they want us to give up. People want me to give up as a black queer woman. People want me to give up as a mom that's trying to do. They want me to, they're going to keep doing what they do to system to make you say, I can't do this anymore. But we don't have a choice because I think about that mother still doing her motherly duties, rocking her baby with no longer of a heartbeat, trying her best to accept what is and knowing she may still be the contact as she grieves this dead life in her arm. Palestine! Let's stay in this. It's non-negotiable. Really exciting. Thank you so much. Next, I don't know, is Crystal Zeevon here? She was next on the list, all right. So, Jaina. Hey everyone, my name is Jaina Ossoff. I use her pronouns and I'm the lead organizer with Free Her Vermont. Thanks for the love, y'all. So I'm here today to give Palestinian and all other black and brown women their flowers as we are constantly the warriors on the front lines of our struggles for liberation domestically and internationally. Women most often carry these movements on their shoulders on top of moving through a patriarchal oppressive world. Palestinian women especially have shown tremendous strength, bravery and power standing proudly in the fight for liberation for their people. Having endured a genocidal campaign for five months now that has undoubtedly created tremendous trauma, they have not let it deter them from continuing to struggle for their freedom. They are fighting while navigating starvation, not having their basic needs met for almost half a year, having their babies without proper medical equipment or postpartum care on top of raising their children and sometimes having to return to the streets hours after a c-section and remaining strong in a world that is slowly being destroyed around them. Let us lift up these women and never forget their tremendous sacrifices for not only Palestine but for their contributions to the fight for our collective liberation. To keep the ties between all our movements strong, let's not forget that as Palestinian women fight in an open air prison in Gaza, we have women in the United States fighting in our state and federal prisons and plans to build 40 new prisons in 40 different states including Vermont. With disproportionate rates of incarcerated women identifying as black, brown, indigenous and poor, we are witnessing our own form of state violence every day throughout our prison systems. Women are deprived of their humanity, food and hygienic products trapped in the grasp of state sanctioned abuse and violence. In our fight to free Gaza, we must first free ourselves. How do we expect aid in the liberation of people abroad when we allow our government to abuse us through policing and prisons in the United States? The Palestinian liberation movement requires us to first gain the tools and mentality necessary to bring us to a liberated world. We must fully push back against the state sanctioned violence committed by the United States and our prison systems as we do with the state sanctioned violence occurring by the Israeli government. In closing, I will leave you all with a quote from Audre Lorde, I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. Free Palestine. Next up we're going to hear from Michelle. Hi folks, my name is Michelle Edelman McCormick, I'm an organizer with Cooperation Vermont and the Palestinian, or the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation and the worker owned Marshall Village store, where a lot of work connects. We've had some really powerful speakers tonight that have brought up a variety of different points that really kind of all thread together for me and as some of you may know, I never have prepared thoughts when I show up, but what strikes me tonight just kind of from my heart and from what I've heard is the absolute need for us to figure out how locally we are going to create a strategy for build and fight. And I don't know if folks are familiar with that phrase or that concept or what we mean by that, but I would encourage you to check out the website for our sister organization CooperationJackson.org and Google their build and fight strategy. And the reality is that as we've heard, all of these things are absolutely interconnected and what we don't often have time for conversation around is that Palestine is not the only genocide that's occurring right now. This is not the only massive slaughter that's happening right now under U.S. imperialism and capitalism. We have to name that shit. We have to absolutely name that capitalism and the exploitation of both people and planet are absolutely at the root of this. That is why our struggles are so absolutely interconnected. It is beyond just the humanity that I feel as a mother of two to the mothers in Palestine right now. Somebody was talking about rage, so much rage. I wake up with that fucking rage every day and the only thing that I know to do with it is to get busy, but if we're not in a unified kind of a vision and a strategy, then we're just being busy doing things. And if we actually accomplish something, it will be by accident. We need to actually come together with a unified strategy to start to build the systems that we need now for our future and now to subvert the systems of capitalism and imperialism and colonization and racism and white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. That's a lot, right? But we know what those things can look like. And I bet most of you are involved in something that is a solution towards that, something that subverts the system at the same time as building a strategy for the future. We have to start organizing. We have to start actually not just, I mean this is wildly important, this resist piece and showing out and showing solidarity, but literally building the things that we're going to need for our own food security, our own housing needs, our own safety systems that we do for protests and things like that, but how do we do that at a community level? We have to start building that shit. Nobody likes to talk about it, but we're going to have to be prepared to fight to protect what we build. And most people aren't having this conversation, that part of that fight to protect what we build, this election season is going to be lit, okay? And I would sooner eat shit before I would vote for Biden, so let's be clear. You can pretty much guarantee whether or not it's in fact or de facto a Trump victory. What does that mean for us? Possibly a bit of an acceleration of this rise of fascism. But it's already here. It's already here. It's already here. The white liberals were clutching their pearls in 2016 being like, oh my God we're a fascist country. No, honey. We were a fascist country when we arrived in 2016 and we just gave it a fucking mascot. Talking to our neighbors who have the fuck-buying flags, who have the make America great hats. Nobody wants to do that. It's not necessarily fun, but we have to talk to those people because they are humans too. Deep inside of them there is a humanity that is suffering from their own form of oppression. Right? Absolutely. And if we're not building those connections, we're not having those conversations, guess what they're listening to? Fox News. Right? And I don't know if you've watched CNN lately, but it's the same horseshit. Oh my God. That's right. Like they are absolutely leading the march into civil war. So unless we figure out through dialogue and finding the common humanity between ourselves and our neighbors who have what we think are some backward ass ideas, that's where they're driving us. And we have to figure out a better strategy for uniting the working class in this country beyond the binary that they have forced us into that doesn't actually fucking exist. And be prepared to fight, folks. That's all I got. Yes, imperialists. Number one. Yeah, it can be really difficult and challenging to build in a place like Vermont. You know, it's rural. We're spread out. It gets really cold. But that is why we need, that's why we need to be here. It's not about going somewhere else where all the people are. The people are here and we're here and this has to be visible and we have to coalesce. And that's what we're doing. Stay out here. Right. So next, we're going to hear from Crystal. Crystal C. My name is Crystal. I wanted to take a couple of minutes to go over some history in response to some narratives that I've been seeing going around. I am a history student. I'm going to be going into the school system hopefully next year. Thank you. Thank you. But I want to be clear before I start, it doesn't take a degree in history to know that genocide is wrong. It doesn't take a degree in history to know that destroying every single hospital in a country is wrong. Or that aid for a country where a million people have lost their home should not be blocked by the occupying country. I'm majoring to know that what's happening right now is despicable and evil in every sense of the word. But the reason I want to speak today as a history teacher, to be, is because a lot of the narratives that you hear going around are predicated upon misinformation and assuming that you don't know your history. So I'm going to tell you the history. First, I want to talk about the claim designists make that Palestinians have no right to the land they live on because there was never a country called Palestine. Now, obviously that's bullshit, but let's go into it real quick. It is true that the identity of Palestine, or identity of Palestinian, is relatively recent. But the people have been there for 2,000 years. They live there in biblical times, they live there during the Muslim conquest, they live there during the Crusades, they live there under the Ottomans, and they live there right now. But they're being forced out. There would be no argument, for example, that European colonizers stole the land here. But the natives here didn't have their own nation state either. But they were still colonized. The same concept applies in Palestine. It's a bullshit argument. Exactly. Period. Now, the next claim is that Muslims inherently want to kill Jews, which is used to say we got to have Israel here. We got to continue to use military power to control the area. And of course, there has been very violent anti-Semitism in world history, especially outside the Middle East and Europe under Christianity. But the thing is, this claim that there can be no coexistence is simply false, because Jews and Muslims lived in the land of Palestine for 300 years before the Balfour Declaration. For centuries, the two religions lived together in harmony. The Ottomans themselves, they encouraged Jewish migration to the Levant. In Safed, for example, Muslims and Jews had roughly equal population sizes, and this happened without a Zionist ethnic state that bombed the other one and got billions in aid from America. So this idea that there can't be coexistence, that Islam is inherently intolerant, and this war will always happen, and will always happen, is just total bullshit. Next, the claim that theft of Palestinian land is actually reclaiming land that Muslims colonized. This claim refers to the Muslim conquest, where Islam spread throughout the Middle East. But this misses a key point that we just went over. The Palestinians were already there. Okay? They are descended from the native Canaanites, and they were already in Palestine when the Muslim conquest happened, and they became Arabized. Again, this is just a nothing argument. And to be clear, there were quite a few Christians in Palestine as well. They're gone now because of the Nakba. There's 700 Christians left in all of Palestine. Anyway, I have two left to go over. I know I'm talking a lot. I know history is kind of boring. Anyway, on to the next one. So actually note that's the law one. All right. Okay. So I want to address the claim that Israel, and we see this a lot. We see the claim that Israel is created in response to the Holocaust, to be a sanctuary state. Now, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, he did want a Jewish colony. But the idea of Israel being a sanctuary state for all Jews to go to did not emerge until decades into the movement. Israel's goal was to have all migrants discard their diasporic traditions. This meant no more speaking Yiddish, no more speaking Arabic, or whatever language might have been spoken. And instead speaking Hebrew, it meant ceasing any cultural traditions that may have emerged in areas around the world. Unsurprisingly, the Jewish diaspora around the world weren't too interested in this. In Germany, for example, in the 1930s, only 4% of German Jews were Zionists. Now, of course, many fled the Holocaust and did go to Germany. But this narrative gets weaponized and used to say everyone that went to Israel to flee the Holocaust is a supporter of Zionism. That's not true. Many of them left immediately after. In the time period between 1815 and 1915, 2 million Jews came to America. Only 60,000 went to Israel. This narrative, and of course, it goes without saying the Holocaust is a horrible tragedy. But that is not a reason to weaponize that tragedy and justify the continued massacre of Palestinians. Final point. I see this narrative a lot, but since Judaism came from the Levant, Israel can't possibly be a colony. And it is true, of course, that Judaism did come from the Levant. But Israel, the state, is just that. A colony. That guy we talked about, Theodore Herzl, he didn't want to improve the religious connection of the Jews. He was an atheist. He didn't give a shit about that. And he looked at places in Madagascar, in Uganda, in Argentina, in Brazil. The fact that it ended up being in the biblical land of Israel was an afterthought. But it's retroactively said, oh, this is because of a historical connection. That's bullshit. That is not true at all. But the Zionists and what Herzl wanted was a European-style colonial state capable of colonizing on its own. Now, as I said, as we discussed, Jewish migration to the Levant has happened throughout history. It happened under the Ottomans. And they live there with the Muslims. What Zionists want is they want to own the land. That's what a colony is. There can be no doubt that Israel is a colony. It is displacing, also it's displacing Arab Jews. That's a whole other topic. But anyway, it is displacing the Palestinian population. I got a lot more, but I know I've been talking for a while. But my point is, hopefully some of this history, I know it's a lot to take in, but hopefully when you hear these arguments come up, you understand that the history doesn't vindicate settler colonialism and the history doesn't vindicate colonization. It vindicates the people of the Levant who for centuries coexisted without an ethno-state funded by the West. Free Palestine, thank you. Thank you, Crystal. So exciting that you're going to be a teacher. We need the teachers. I'm super biased because I'm a teacher, but we need the teachers. All right, we are going to close this portion of our program with Alex from the party Socialism Liberation. And then I think we're going to circle Mark, do some chanting in the drum line. Is that, yeah. All right. Cool. Take it away, Alex. Hello, everyone. Yesterday, Joe Biden gave a State of the Union. During that State of the Union, his scant mention of the ongoing genocide, he announced that he would be building a port off the coast of Gaza in order to get in aid. He wants to get food into the concentration camp that he's bombing, to be clear. Now this is obviously a contradiction. Our ally is the reason no food can get into Gaza. Our ally is blocking food trucks into the border of Gaza. On top of that, we defunded Urnwa. The top relief agency in the area on false claims by Israel. Instead of holding Israel accountable in any way, instead of blocking weapons, instead of blocking aid, instead of threatening Netanyahu, what are we doing? We're building a port. We're building a port and it's going to take months, months when 15 children have already starved to death in Gaza, when millions are on the brink. The insanity of the ruling class is dropping bombs on you and then sending you some fucking band-aids. The hundred weapons transfers have taken place to Israel since October 7th. 100. Do you know why it's so many? Because they found a loophole so they could go around Congress. So they're not listening to us, even though we've been everywhere and we've been disrupting everything, they're not listening to Congress, they're not listening to fucking anybody. Chanel, when he self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy, said, this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Is this normal? We'll come back home. I can direct you to two things. First of all, a Democratic governor in New York militarizing the fucking subway, the National Guard searching people's bags because she said it will make people feel safe. Do you feel safe? Another fascism that is now bipartisan. I remember when people used to say no human is illegal, yesterday Joe Biden said thousands of illegals are killing citizens. All of this comes back home. It doesn't just stay 5,000 miles away. Fascism there, fascism here. Many are saying that the number of dead in Gaza is a severe undercount because they've destroyed all civil society. They've destroyed basically anything that makes it possible to count. That's why the number has not increased much since December, even though we know bombs are raining down on a daily basis. A real estimate, according to many, is closer to 200,000 dead, 200,000 universes. Just gone. And for what? For what? For a military outpost for the United States in the Middle East. Joe Biden once said that if not for Israel's existence, we would have to invent it to secure our interests in the region. American imperialism is the reason for these atrocities. American imperialism values no life, so we call for an end to U.S. imperialism. Occupation, Wednesday. And you can't celebrate this day without thinking about the women in Gaza, the pregnant women who are giving birth in tents, the pregnant women who are having C-sections without anesthesia. Women are using tents as menstrual products. We cannot forget the women that are holding their children in their arms as they are taking their lives. Certain women. Women's liberation here is tied to women's liberation everywhere. Israel has its sights set on Rafe, the most densely populated place on earth where the desperate people were told to flee by Israel. Now they're about to be invaded while the ruling class is completely unbothered. This is when each and every one of us need to ask ourselves, is this the world we want to build? Is this a world that is consistent with our values? What you are here today tells me the answer is no. Look to your left. Look to your right. The people standing next to you today are the people who will be part of building the better world that we all deserve. The people who stand up when there is a genocide happening. The people who show up and make their voice heard. You are the future. Those who are silent, those who excuse this, they are part of the old world. The world that would have you shrug off crimes against humanity. Today we'll be left behind. So stay in the struggle. Stay in the fight. There are lives to save and there is a world to win. Free Palestine. Bring the drums. We're going to do some chanting and then we'll come back. We have some announcements about upcoming events. I'm standing at a protest today as I've stood at many. Standing for a free Palestine and a free world. To all the people in Palestine we bear witness to their grief and their resilience and we have to mobilize now and organize now for a different future. God bless Palestine for opening our eyes to the colonizers that are taking over this world in the name of power and oil and greed. We are done with this fascism and we are prepared to move towards a free Palestine and a free world. Hi, my name is Morgan. I'm here at an action of sorts. It's really nice to be in community with people who are outwardly against genocide. And as somebody who sits a lot for a job just staring at a computer screen it feels good to do something.