The Power of One Voice
Learning about Land Day and witnessing solidarity in a small protest
Welcome to another edition of Willoughby Hills!
This newsletter explores topics like history, culture, work, urbanism, transportation, travel, agriculture, self-sufficiency, and more.
Yesterday was Land Day for Palestinians.
I’m not embarrassed to say that I didn’t know what Land Day was until yesterday. Many of you may be hearing about it for the first time right now. The last six months have been a process of uncovering just how little I have known about world history, world cultures, and world events, especially relative to Palestine. These stories have often been intentionally suppressed in America, which is why it is so important to keep reading and learning more.
Jenan Matari has a great (though heartbreaking) video explainer about Land Day on her Instagram and Al Jazeera has an article about it if you’re interested in going deeper than I will here.
Land Day commemorates the death of six Palestinians on March 30, 1976 who were protesting Israel’s seizure of nearly 5,000 acres of land. It’s a day when Palestinians plant olive trees as a way to reconnect with the earth and stay grounded in their land, even as Palestine gets continually reduced in size.
The seizure of land is ongoing, right up until this current month. On March 22, Israel declared that it would seize almost 2,000 more acres in the West Bank to build illegal settlements.
There were protests across the world yesterday, but I didn’t realize that they were happening or why until later in the day when looking on social media. My attention and thoughts were on a different protest that I happened upon.
My Saturday morning was busy with driving boxes and furniture between our old house in Eastern Massachusetts and our new house in Western Massachusetts as we continue to slowly move.
Most of my drive was on two-lane country roads through picturesque central Massachusetts. Many of the towns that I passed through are sparsely settled and quite rural. Trump flags far outnumber rainbow flags or Black Lives Matter signs. Large pickup trucks are the transportation mode of choice.
At one point, the road passes right through the picturesque town of Belchertown (yes that’s its real name). The center of town has a stereotypical though not necessarily noteworthy New England village with a large church, a town green, and several antique buildings.
On that town green on Saturday, standing adjacent to the intersection of two large roads was a group of older white protestors. They looked to be in their seventies and were maybe a half dozen or so in number. They wore kufiyas and were holding simple homemade signs with messages like “Free Palestine” or “Ceasefire Now.”
I honked my horn at the protestors as I passed them and gave them a thumbs up. I wanted these protestors and other passing motorists and pedestrians to know that I stood in solidarity with the sign holders and their numbers were greater than just the few folks on the sidewalk.
But I started to wonder as I drove away why these people chose to spend a Saturday in their small town holding signs and whether that act would really make any difference in the world. If the goal was truly ending the violence, would their efforts have been more impactful joining a larger protest in Boston perhaps or joining in some other direct action targeting politicians or the media?
In fact, these people didn’t even need to travel too far to find a more visible and louder protest. Belchertown is about 15 miles from the campus of Smith College, where students have been occupying an administration building for the last several days demanding that the college divest from companies affiliated with Israeli arms.
The protest at Smith includes dozens of students, large banners, and Palestinian flags. The protest in Belchertown, though not that far away geographically, couldn’t have been more different. Just old white people holding signs and waving.
As I thought more about this, I realized that small demonstrations and acts like this are still important and that they can make a difference. The latest data from Pew Research Center indicates that only 22% of Americans are following the news around Gaza closely. 34% of respondents weren’t sure whether there have been more Israeli or Palestinian deaths in this war. 7% of people surveyed believe there have been more Israeli deaths!
Americans are simply not paying attention, and what will grab one person’s attention may not grab another’s.
If those protestors in Belchertown got even one person who had not been paying attention to go home and Google something about Palestine after seeing their neighbors hold signs, that’s a victory. If even one person approached the protestors on the street and asked questions, that’s also a victory.
When people think about the struggle for Black Civil Rights in America, often the vision that comes to mind is Martin Luther King addressing hundreds of thousands of people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
That event mattered, but it would not have happened were it not for thousands of smaller demonstrations and acts of local resistance that preceded it: the Greensboro lunch counter sit in, where four Black students asked to be served at a “whites only” lunch counter. Rosa Parks refusing to move her seat on a bus. These acts weren’t directly challenging the president or federal authorities: they were challenging a lunch counter attendant and a bus driver in the local community.
The same is true with Palestine. Large demonstrations matter. But conversations, education, and listening on a small scale matter too.
As long as Americans are indifferent, uninformed, or see the problem as too big for any individual to solve, they can absolve themself of any responsibility for the genocide in Gaza. Never mind that we are directly funding what’s happening and supplying weapons to murder Palestinians, as The Washington Post published on Friday:
“The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel despite Washington’s concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians.”
We are told there is no money for universal health care, paid parental leave, decent infrastructure, or any other form of social safety net, yet the President can quietly authorize billions of dollars to kill civilians?!
That’s why standing on a street corner on a Saturday to wave at neighbors in a small town, posting on social media, or having conversations with a friend, relative, or colleague matters. These acts can help change minds. Even just one mind.
Because changing minds has a multiplying effect. If two minds were changed with that small protest in Belchertown and those two people can then change two more minds, that’s four minds changed. And on and on it goes until suddenly hundreds or thousands or millions of people begin paying attention, begin speaking out, begin demanding more of our government.
What act of resistance or solidarity can you engage in within your community that might cause somebody to think differently? How can you get involved? It can be as small as spending a few hours on a corner holding a sign. But it might make a difference.
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Related Reading
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If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.
I’m part of a local group bringing interfaith dinners to our community. We always invite local elected leaders (city council, school board) and city staff. Three of the six of us organizing have long been active in local civic groups, nonprofits etc. In other words, we’ve spent years building relationships, so we have the ability to actually get these leaders to the table. Our community is ethnically diverse, but dominated by conservative Republican politics, even at the local level. Getting our city council and school board members to attend these dinners has been huge in giving a voice to our Muslim and Hindu neighbors. I suppose this is an act of solidarity, but we really consider it an opportunity to learn and build empathy across difference. Absolutely nothing I do will change what is happening in Gaza, but I can make sure that people in my community, especially those in power, keep talking to each other and resist the hate and vitriol spreading to our city.
Thank you so much for this reminder and the humility in sharing your own learning process.