The One Year of Resistance protest took its start at noon on Saturday, Oct. 5, with Palestinian Youth Movement and Students for Justice in Palestine taking the helm at the event. But prior to its formal start, activists arriving greeted each other warmly. Ranging from excited waves to a common, gentle embrace, many organizers are also approaching the anniversary of friendships forged in the previous year.
“There’s a lot of friends I’ve made at the protests […] I can’t imagine my life without them,” one protester says. “I’m really thankful for the sense of community here. I think it’s really special that with all this tragedy and fighting for change that you can make those connections.”
However, while demonstrators mostly share emotional warmth all but wordlessly between one another, the unbridled rage of this moment has not faded. Israel’s government has achieved what many analysts have already predicted it would. With airstrikes in Lebanon and Syria, along with a ground invasion on the former, it has successfully caused a larger conflict in the Middle East with the military support of the Biden/Harris administration.
Even as Israeli ground forces are currently overwhelmed in Lebanon and Iranian missiles are hitting its military sites, Harris has consistently reaffirmed support and is likely to continue bankrolling weapons shipments. The most recent aid package amounted to $8.7 billion, with $3.5 billion allotted for wartime procurement and $5.2 billion for air defense systems. Likewise, support for Israel has effectively eclipsed homebound issues. Around $210 million in federal aid has been set aside to address damages caused by Hurricane Helene in the lower east coast, equal to just around 2.5% of the funds sent to support the IDF.
Nida Abu-Baker, the daughter of Holy Land Foundation Founder and CEO Shukri Abu-Baker, spoke on her father’s political imprisonment and her advocacy for Palestine. “I am the daughter of Dallas’ very own Shukri Abu-Baker, […] now a Palestinian political prisoner, unjustly sentenced for 65 years in prison,” Abu-Baker says. “Today I stand before you, not just as a daughter of a Palestinian political prisoner, but a daughter of Palestine and as a voice for the millions affected by injustice, imprisonment, and genocide.” Shukri Abu-Baker and other HLF leaders were sentenced in 2009 under the notion that their social programs helped win the “hearts and minds” of the Palestinian people for the resistance group Hamas.
Frustration is tangible among protesters, as the current administration has resisted pressure from progressives to stop shipping weapons to Israel. But election day steadily approaches and many are looking at third-party candidates as potential foils to those supportive of genocide.
“The world knows it is not just one year of resistance, it’s decades of resistance,” says Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party candidate running for president. “Know that we have 68% of Americans who want to end this genocide. Know that in the last election, one out of every three eligible voters did not vote because they are not buying the politics of empire. We have two parties of empire. To vote for a candidate supporting genocide, endorses, infirms, and makes possible the genocide.”
While many platforms have expressed skepticism regarding the Green Party’s campaign, supporters point out that opportunities for equal ballot access and federal funding in subsequent elections are attainable if they break the 5% threshold in November.
“It’s like the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,“ says Stein. “Over the course of these races we have built name recognition, we have built support so that we are at the point potentially of a major breakthrough right now.”
As protesters marched from Union Station in a loop by-way of Lamar, blocking traffic with numbers in the thousands, additional speakers addressed the crowd at key points.
“In the next few days you’re going to hear everything about the horror of October 7, but we ain’t gonna hear nothing about what happened before October 7,” says Pastor Frederick Haynes III of Friendship West Baptist Church. “We’re not gonna hear about the fact that before October 7 that Gaza was already an open-air prison. […] That the United States was supporting Israel in the practice of apartheid that is so vicious and so brutal that even Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu said that Israeli apartheid is the worst apartheid he has ever witnessed. Even more so than what happened in South Africa. […] I’m glad that we’re pulling the cover of hypocrisy off of what America calls ‘democracy.’”
Imam Muhammad Abdullah of Masjid Al-Islam in South Dallas, another prominent Black community leader, later took the microphone to address protesters. “Even though I’m not a Palestinian by blood, I am a Palestinian by struggle. I will continue to struggle until Palestine is free. No matter the cost.”
The Weekly previously covered the connection between Black and Palestinian liberation last year. And as topics like racism and policing have re-entered media focus, so too has Israel and the United States’ common patterns of discrimination. Stein’s running mate, Professor Butch Ware, arrived following the march through downtown. When asked about public commitment to the Democratic Party, specifically among Black demographics, Ware stated:
“The Democrats have ignored Black southern voters for 60 years. When you look at the demography of the south, this should be an absolute powerhouse for freedom-oriented politics. And instead, the poverty pimping and dependency politics of the Democratic Party has left Black communities in the south feeling alienated and powerless,” Ware says. “That ends when we start talking about reparations from day one.”
As Palestinians, Black folks, and other marginalized people in the United States sit at the precipice of a vast potential change with the election, politically-conscious Americans search for public servants they can identify with. While organizers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation and candidates from the Green Party lend their voices to the movement for Palestinian liberation, these groups have further identified themselves as strong political forces that may see their influence grow in coming years.