January 01, 2010
A New Year to Work For Justice and Peace
By
Katherine Dodds
It's a time of reflection on where the need is, and on what one can possibly do to have any kind of impact. I prepared for the new year by having a donations frenzy yesterday afternoon for a number of alternative media venues that I regularly read. (List and links at the end of this blog). And thank you to all you HelloCoolWorld.com supporters that donated to
GiveSomethingBig. If you missed the chance to send holiday cards, you can
donate to Inter Pares anytime! We think they are worth supporting.
Now my thoughts my heart goes out to Gaza.
Last year around this time I was marching in the unusual Vancouver snow in protest against Israel's massacre in Gaza. This year I will head out in this grey drizzly Vancouver rain at 3pm to the art gallery in solidarity with Code Pink's Gaza Freedom March. Google Gaza or look on #Gaza, #gfm for an action near you. Read about the Code Pink 'Women Say no to War" and the Gaza delegation.
I have been following on twitter and various sites the situation of the international delegation that has been blocked by Egypt at the border.
Following attacks on the international delegation by Egyptian police, today David Heap writes (via Rabble.ca):
"Against all odds, we had done what we set out to do-to say to the Egyptian authorities and the world, "if you won't let us go to Gaza, we'll simply start from here and walk." If you want to stop us, you'll have to physically stop us-we won't comply with your orders. And if you physically stop us, then we will have brought Gaza to Cairo-we will dramatize for the eyes of the world the situation that the people of Gaza are in. This pen, this improvised prison in the central square is another annex to the huge, open-air prison that Gaza has become, where a million and a half people live in the most densely crowded conditions on earth, where the Israelis control the borders and decide who can get in and who can get out, rationing out the necessities of life, blocking the materials of reconstruction and the means of livelihood for the Gazan people.
So we held the space throughout the day, with songs and chants and drumbeats, with shared food and water and an improvised pee station."
While some of us wanted to keep the space until after midnight, i.e. the new year, the collective decision was to leave on our own terms after 4 pm, in small groups so everyone was safe. The day and the year ended with a vigil for Gaza in Tahrir Square.
Today, January first, non-Zionist Jews led a rally with hundreds of international GFMers in front of the Israeli embassy. Some of the hunger-strikers (including Hedy Epstein) had broken their fast earlier in the day, the rest broke their fast at a Shabbat prayer led by Rabbi Lynn, as they shared bread in a Shabbat ceremony and sang of Shalom (peace) in the midst of a high-spirited crowd."
Follow the situation via blogs on Rabble.ca
Alternative Media I donated to for my New Year's Karma"
Rabble.ca
TheTyee.ca
Alternet
Democracy Now!
and not to forget my local arts & culture friends (cuz after all I have two art degrees!)
The Vancouver Review
and also, of course,
www.GiveSomethingBig.com
Why don't you report on your donation karma and suggest who else out there you think needs a boost?
Happy New Year! Let the new struggle begin... XO kat
Tag(s):
Alternative Economics,
Big Picture,
Campaign 4 Corporate Harm Reduction,
Graphic Design,
Hello Cool World,
Inter Pares,
Media Democracy Day,
Media Activism,
Middle East,
Poverty and Economic Justice,
Social Justice,
The Corporation,
Gaza,
Freedom for Palestine
Recent Blogs by Katherine Dodds:
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Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.
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