Activists Keep Reaching Out to Victoria in Solidarity with Palestine

Twenty-one weeks into a genocide that shocked the world, hundreds in Victoria keep rallying at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and marching across town reaching out to the public, calling desperately for a ceasefire in Gaza and freedom for Palestine.

This afternoon about five hundreds gathered on the Legislature precincts, a higher turnout than usual, and I don’t think this can be attributed solely to the clement weather. News pour about the shooting, bombing, and mass starvation of more than a million people in Gaza, into a torrent that refuses to let itself be filtered out by complicit media. Twenty-one weeks on, a movement that struggles against becoming routine also refuses to allow news of a genocide to become banal. Twenty-one weeks on, it defies the authorities’ prognostic that it would just die out after running out of steam.

Recent developments have drawn consternation even from consumers so insulated from world news that their primary source is the Disney Channel. Horrifying pictures of the flour massacre in Gaza, or the clip of Aaron Bushnell setting himself on fire in protest, find their way through a wall of indifference and disinformation. Anti-Palestinian rhetoric is falling apart globally, such that for example the European Commission just resumed its funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), unable to substantiate Israel’s claims it has been massively infiltrated by Hamas.

Today I saw a lady distribute flyers she made herself, which depict Aaron Bushnell’s act to draw the public’s attention to the current crisis. While it’s not much, she’s doing what little she can with the means she has. I gave a copy to an outreach worker at my supportive housing complex, who’d somehow barely heard about the whole polemic. Believe it or not, in spite of dozens of actions across town over months, there are still members of the public going on with their lives blissfully unaware of what their taxpayer dollars are funding.

Today I also watched a kid in elementary school tell how she’d convinced her class not to carry out a field trip at Starbucks over its support of the genocide in Gaza; while I receive news of the company bleeding cash with extreme scepticism, I know it won’t be selling a whole classroom’s worth of drinks and snacks. That was the doing of someone barely tall enough to reach my waist.

Which begs the question: what have you been doing lately to spread the word? A protest is a battle in the court of public opinion. We know we can’t count on the mainstream media to spread the word, and that’s why every little gesture makes a difference. We’re winning this war, one handshake at a time. How many hands did you shake today? How many people did you talk to about Palestine? How many flyers did you distribute?