from Fightback! News, October 13, 2023
Milwaukee, WI – Nearly 2000 people joined a mass demonstration organized by the Milwaukee Anti-war Committee on Wednesday evening to show support for the people of Palestine as they resist the Israeli occupation. People of all ages, draped in keffiyehs and carrying Palestine flags, flooded the streets of downtown Milwaukee behind a banner reading “Long live the popular Palestinian resistance.”
Outside U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin’s office, several community leaders and activists took turns blasting the hypocrisy of Senator Baldwin, and Congresswoman Gwen Moore. The two Democrats habitually support over $3 billion a year in U.S. military aid for Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and war crimes against Palestinians.
Speakers expressed support for the legal and moral right of the Palestinian people to resist Israel’s genocidal occupation, which has killed more than 1000 Palestinians this week.
“The media is trying to tell us Palestinians that we should resist in any way but this. We should ask them what is resistance? What did they expect it to be like?” said Amani Daliyeh of Students for Justice in Palestine at Marquette University. “Palestinians have every right to resist in the way they are resisting, but no one has the right to tell them how to resist.”
Jacob Anikulapo of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization asked the crowd to take hope in the recent uprisings, saying, “When freedom fighters in Gaza broke out of the cage Israel built to contain them, they sent shockwaves through the apartheid regime. The Palestinian popular resistance smashed the facade of invincibility of the occupation. This is a new era of the struggle.”
Anikulapo continued, “The lies and myths that uphold the occupation are crumbling down before us!”
The Milwaukee Anti-War Committee (MAC) united nine organizations to host Wednesday’s mass protest, including Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, US Palestinian Community Network, American Muslims for Palestine, Islamic Society of Milwaukee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
Earlier this year, MAC organized protests outside of Representative Gwen Moore’s office, demanding she sign onto HR 3103, “The Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.”
MAC and other sponsors of Wednesday’s rally have come together in a coalition to challenge pervasive false narratives about the Israeli occupation, and to pursue sustained efforts to create change.