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I think we could advance the discussion if we each talked about what we are doing on Palestine. I am active in MidIslanders for Justice and Peace in Palestine. http://midislanders.com/ Despite the name, we are not affiliated with Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, one of a number of organizations that are doing good work on Palestine. http://www.cjpme.org/ There is a range of opinion in our organization on any number of questions, so whatever messages I send to this list are my own opinion, not necessarily shared by anyone else in our group. We have public meetings whenever a speaker is available to us. Our one consistent activity is a one hour vigil in downtown Nanaimo (Pop. 84,000) on the last Friday of the month. For this vigil we have taken the name of Women in Black. http://midislanders.com/women-in-black/ My Free Gaza banner gets a lot of different reactions. Some people ask me, "What's Gaza?" So it is fair to say that we are doing very basic education. A minority of people, a small minority, express agreement with us. But this is an encouraging shift in opinion. Our work is only a small part of this. Perhaps more important is the reaction that many people have to the ferocity of Israeli attacks on Gaza. A smaller number of people express hostility to us. This last Friday an aboriginal man criticized me for holding up my Free Gaza banner while I was standing on stolen land. When the light changed the driver of his car moved on, so I can't say if this person was a serious activist or not. But it certainly underlines our weakness. It's an entirely white group standing at the vigil. And we are heavily weighted to retirees. Once a year we have a table at the local Labour Day picnic. Often we get a few minutes at the microphone to talk about our work. But, at the same time, politicians associated with the (labour affiliated) New Democratic Party steer clear of our table and all of our events. So I was pleased when we we invited to have a table at a Green Party event two years ago. This past Monday I attended a daytime meeting at a Nanaimo church. The United Church of Canada had begun to raise its voice on Palestine. http://ww.unjppi.org/index.html The United Church is a major denomination and can potentially reach a large number of people. ken h _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
