Shut It Down

This morning, protesters in New York City shut down the Holland Tunnel, Williamsburg Bridge, Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge during the Monday morning rush hour, in solidarity with Palestine. This was a coalition of organizers working together to amplify the Palestinian Youth Movement’s demands, which are for an immediate, permanent ceasefire, an end to the siege on Gaza and its occupation by Israel, along with an end of US funding to Israel and a release of Palestinian prisoners. From an Instagram post today, the Palestinian Youth Movement writes

“By blocking the city’s exits, the protesters created—briefly, imperfectly--a physical analogue for the situation in Gaza, where there is no getting out. By stopping freedom of movement for drivers, the protesters drew parallels to the meaningless and cruel evacuation orders that the Zionist regime, in the midst of its relentless aerial, naval, and ground assault of Gaza, leaving people with no choice but to wait until their homes and shelters are bombed or to leave their city on foot.”

Scenes from a Shutdown, January 8, 2024

The number of dead in Gaza exceeds 25,000, in just under 100 days. No one is safe. People are starving and news headlines will have you believe it’s from a drought. I don’t quite know what information to write here if you haven’t been moved to action in the past few months to support Palestine. I know what moves people more in this country is the inconvenience of traffic or missed flights.

A few weeks ago I was a part of a protest that shut down the Van Wyck to Terminal 4 at JFK. El Al, the national airline of Israel, flies out of Terminal 4. There was nothing random about this action. There is nothing random about any of the actions. I wondered for a few days if I should be a part of it, I wondered if it would “move the needle,” a terrible phrase that makes me feel like a political consultant talking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. I wondered if the action would just alienate people and piss them off. Then I wondered if I just struggled with making the decision because I was scared.

If the targeted hits on journalists and their families don’t move the needle, what will? If bombings of hospitals and refugee camps don’t move the needle, what will? If the images of babies left to become dust in incubators don’t move the needle, what will? Where is this fucking needle, how much trauma and death does it require? How many phone calls have been made to representatives and the White House to stop funding Israel and giving them bombs our taxes build? There is no right way to tell the status quo to stop pursuing its power. It just goes into a phone log.

In this country we mistake inconvenience as a violation against our liberty and freedom, we consider it violence. We keep sacrificing people to power, thinking it can surely be satiated, that at some point Israel will say we have killed enough Palestinians. They don’t care that they kill children, that’s just good genocide. We’ve always told ourselves that if we knew of the horrors of war, of ethnic cleansing, of slavery, that social media and the internet would alert us to it and we would definitely do something about it. It turns out we can only witness how inconsequential our ideas of democracy and human rights are. There’s nothing we can do about it because our government is not ours.

I think the person who filled out this ticket was sending a message of solidarity with the second “free”

Every time I see people stop traffic on a bridge, street or highway, using their bodies, I hope to be as brave as they are. I still remember watching a woman throw the keys to her car in the water on the Bay Bridge during a November protest. Every time I see someone stand up for what is right in front of machines and weapons, they inspire me. I don’t want fear to stop me from doing what is right. Being polite is not stopping the indiscriminate murder of Palestinians. People call protesters terrorists, members of Hamas and assholes, but rule number one is don’t read the comments. Rule number two, our acceptance is the real terror.

I’m not writing this because I’m some white savior. That’s not it. I’m writing this because, fuck, the power of regular people is a real thing, if you’re willing to see it. I know that as a cis, middle-aged white woman, the way I get treated and arrested by the police can be very different than how black people, brown people, Muslims, queer people and trans people get treated and arrested by the police, the same people who have told us time and time again that no one fight is singular, they are all connected. And unfortunately, the onus of liberation keeps falling to the people who have told us that the work is not done, no matter what the politicians, press and white people say.

The upheaval, of people over the empire, over injustice and murder, we are in it. Some day you may get in the way. Some day you might have something someone in power wants. Some day you might be someone the state doesn’t think is worthy of respect and dignity. Some day someone you love might be collateral damage. Your silence doesn’t grant passage.