by Jeannie Connerney
The author participated in The People’s Prescription, and this is a statement she read at the Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church in West Roxbury on September 13.
My name is Jeannie, and today is the third day of my hunger strike. I’m feeling a little hungry, groggy, and weak, but I will be ok. Over 2 million people in Gaza may very well not be ok, and I fast in solidarity with them. Like you, for almost 2 years, I’ve seen the images of the displaced, whose homes, schools, hospitals, water, and entire society have been bombed, as they walk through the rubble seeking food and shelter. The woman whose milk has dried up screaming with grief over her dead baby, the face of a skeletal child, crying & holding out an empty pot, a father weeping over the shrouded corpses of his entire family. These images don’t stop coming.
I can think of nothing more sadistic than firing live ammunition into a crowd and murdering starving people at a food distribution site and consistently blocking flotillas attempting to deliver flour and baby formula. What level of moral depravity have we reached? I say “we” because we are all human. The human race is in this together, and it is up to us to stop it. Sadly, our government is complicit in this genocide, and they’re actively enabling it with our tax dollars.
I’m also an Irish citizen. Like Palestinians, my ancestors also experienced occupation, land theft, settler colonialism, racism, apartheid, and starvation at the hands of occupation forces. You’ve probably heard of the Irish Potato Famine. Like me, perhaps you learned about it in elementary school. They told us that because the potato crop failed for several years, a famine occurred. What they failed to mention was that as in Gaza, there was plenty of food available, in this case, not stopped at the border, but within Ireland itself. The settler colonial tenant farm system, however, meant that landlords continued to ship it to other parts of Europe for huge profits. The British government believed in a system of free-market capitalism and laissez-faire economics and did very little to save the people some described as “white gorillas.” One million people starved to death, and between 1 and 2 million emigrated. The population of Ireland has still not reached pre-famine levels.
Isn’t it always about money and racism? US-based tech companies rake in massive profits by selling to the Israeli army. Inappropriately named “defense” contractors make billions by selling weapons to both our government and the Israeli government in order to continue this genocide against people the Israeli Defense Minister has called “human animals.” That’s why we’re asking you to please take a look at the Peoples Hunger Strike website, please attend our events, and please call Warren, Markey, and Clark and demand they support the Block the Bombs bill to stop our taxes from enabling genocide for profit.
I’m reminded of the words of Bobby Sands, imprisoned by the British in the North of Ireland. He was the first of 10 Irish political prisoners to die on hunger strike in 1981. “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children,” he said. The North eventually reached a ceasefire and an agreement, something we continue to pray for in Palestine. By that time, will there be any children left in Gaza who are still able to laugh?
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Jeanne Connerney is a member of MAPA; Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment; Pax Christi; and Irish-Americans for Palestine, Boston.
