It was a cold afternoon despite the sun, but more than a thousand people rallied at Copley Square and marched through downtown Boston to demonstrate solidarity with Gaza’s besieged people. Some photos and brief comments.
The rally began at Copley Square. People came from a lot of organizations, several of which organized the protest.
The Community Church across the street, an old activist church whose members are involved in a wide array of progressive issues, showed its support.
Once the march began, there were plenty of different signs, moods, and approaches. I always like the drumming.
I was glad to see several signs identifying Jews against the assault on Gaza.
Several ultra-orthodox Naturei Karta came up from New York, as they often do to support Israel’s Palestinian victims.
Their religiously-based anti-Zionism always comes as a shock, as I captured a few years ago at another downtown Boston demo.
After leaving Copley and heading through Downtown Crossing, today’s marchers stopped briefly next to Boston Common. Given the cold weather, even here there weren’t very many shoppers or tourists to pay much attention.
From there on to the Israeli Consulate, where the energy level picked up again.
Back at Copley for some final speeches, the sun now mostly gone behind tall buildings, at least some tourists got to check out the scene.
Now, a few hours later, I’m sitting in my kitchen listening to news of Israel’s ground invasion. I’ve been doing a lot of that this past week, and obsessively reading online news sites and the endless stream of emails each bringing yet more depressing reports and analysis. I just read that Internet access to Gaza has been cut off, which if true means no more direct updates from people on the ground. As always, things don’t look good.
Technorati Tags: Boston, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, photos, protest
hi dennis — i’m new to the area. could you tell me website or e-mail list i can get on to find out about these protests. thanks!
On the Palestine issue in particular, start with the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights.
To find out what’s going on in general in Boston, there’s an email listserv for activists.
Good luck!
thanks!
Good blog by Dennis. Couldn’t find a whisper of this protest in the Globe. Isn’t a protest of this magnitude newsworthy? What’s up with this? What’s up with the Globe? It feels like a conspiracy to stick it to Gaza. Why aren’t Obamans objecting? And now a ground invasion. What’s this going to cause….death, and more death. Prayer seems necessary.
Thanks for covering this! I’m writing something up for the Huffington Post right now and will link to this entry. Check out my blog for an update later on (and a link to the HuffPost piece).
[...] Dennis Fox also covered the rally on his blog, and NECN gave excellent television coverage. You can also check out the rest of my photos here. [...]
Thanks for these efforts
I wish I understood more why this war is happening, it’s history, and what’s deeply underneath it. Yet irregardless, I don’t understand why people are so blindly going along with it. This level and type of violence from Israel goes far far beyond any of the violence of Hamas or related rebels. The mainstream media never truly covers why Pallestinians are are so angry to begin with.
thanks.
heyyy when is the next protest in Boston? i’d reallyy love to get innvolved