Minneapolis protests 3 years of Gaza genocide in downtown march
Minneapolis, MN– On Saturday, October 10, hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Minneapolis to join the Free Palestine Coalition (FPC) in marking three years of resistance to Israel’s genocide in Palestine.
Protesters demanded an end to the genocide and an end to U.S. aid to Israel. The crowd was energized by chants of “We will not stop; we will not rest! Boycott, sanctions and divest!” A choral group, Singing Resistance, led the crowd in resistance songs while the protest blocked an intersection downtown.
Meredith Aby, director of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), addressed the crowd, asking “How many of you feel like the news this week has gaslighted us? They claim there is a ‘ceasefire’. It’s not a ceasefire. It’s a genocide. Israel has killed a child in Gaza every 71 minutes for three years! Israeli attacks have killed over 1100 Palestinians in Gaza over the last year, with the total confirmed killed since October 2023 reaching over 74,000.”
Since al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, over 175,000 people have been injured, and 94% of health facilities and hospitals have been damaged. The impact of the attacks has meant nearly all of the schools in Gaza have been destroyed, leaving no real educational infrastructure. Israel continues to block access of most food, oil and medical supplies, committing genocide in more ways than just bombs and guns.
Nadiyah Salawdeh, co-chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network – Minnesota brought attention to the decades of attacks by the Israeli state, saying, “The Palestinian people have undergone genocide for nearly 80 years. Our villages have been ethnically cleansed. The Israeli settler-state has made Palestinians into permanent refugees and slaughtered them in their camps. They have been starved and jailed and denied basic medical access.”
The protest demands also called for an end to the war on Iran and Lebanon. Yossi Aharoni, member of the MN Anti-War Committee, told the crowd, “Palestine gives me hope. Yemen gives me hope. Lebanon gives me hope. Iran gives me hope.”
Aharoni continued, “Iran, a small, besieged country, cut off from the world, stood up to the United States and punched it right in the mouth and said, ‘No more!’ If Palestine can survive 78 years of unimaginable hardship; if Iran can stand up to the most powerful military force in the world, then who are we to give up?”
The protest was accompanied by many other protests throughout the Twin Cities earlier in the week, such as Students for a Democratic Society’s protest at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and WAMM’s protest at the Lake Street/Marshall Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River, both on October 7.