10,000 march on MN Capitol for Gaza
St. Paul, MN – 10,000 people marched on the Minnesota State Capitol, November 11, in the first march organized by the newly formed Free Palestine Coalition. Protesters gathered at Cathedral Hill Park and then marched to the State Capitol in a march titled “All out for Gaza.”
Organizers called for 10,000 Minnesotans to come to represent the death toll that was recently reached in Gaza and the crowd filled with Palestinian flags represented this total in both protesters and in the flags with names of the dead on the capitol lawn.
Organizers chose the State Capitol as the end of the protest because they wanted to highlight the role the State Board of Investment plays in investing public dollars into Israeli companies and bonds and in weapons manufacturers which are profiting from the crisis. Additionally, Governor Tim Walz has stoked the ire of the Palestine solidarity movement for his one-sided expression of empathy for only Israeli victims of the war.
Meredith Aby, an organizer with the MN Anti-War Committee and the Free Palestine Coalition, “The UN secretary general said this week that ‘Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.’ It is critical to demand an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Last weekend many Minnesotans traveled to DC to be a part of the historic march for Palestine. But going to DC is not enough. We need to keep up the pressure here at home so that the Minnesota congressional delegation and the governor understand that we expect them to take a stand against genocide!”
The protest had speakers from American Muslims for Palestine MN, Students for Justice in Palestine, and CAIR MN.
“Minnesota has for more than 100 years maligned and demonized Dakota patriots who resisted their genocide in this place,” said Melanie Yazzie of the Red Nation to the thousands of protesters at the state capitol. “Palestinians resist the same colonial system that native people have been resisting for five centuries.”
Yazzie continued, “The relationship between the United States and Israel is so intertwined that the colonial tactics of both nations must be understood as not just parallel, but as mirror images of each other.”