Great acoustics in the Maine State House for activists at a Maine Coalition for Palestine event today. The Chamber of Commerce was hosting in the Hall of Flags offering the opportunity to confront General Dynamics and stage a die-in directly in front of them.
An older guy with GD was angry at our presence and he "accidentally" grazed my head with his shoe and then yelled that I had tried to trip him. He seemed especially aggravated by the chant, General Dynamics you can't hide / we charge you with genocide, yelling, "We're not hiding! We're right here!!"
So that part alone really made my day.
Overall a great day. The amazing solidarity of our group felt good and our STOP ARMING GENOCIDE t-shirts and strong chanting carried a clear message: Tax breaks for genocide profiteers must go!
Everyone doing this work has a heart breaking for Gaza, and the children and their families in Palestine, and this is one thing we felt that we could do in response.
After holding the space for about a half hour, we cleared out as requested and headed upstairs to the legislative floor where many more lawmakers and lobbyists were present. I'm sure they had heard us down in the Hall of Flags, and now they could see us. The journalists who had started covering us downstairs followed us. Eventually we let ourselves get kicked out of there, too, and headed downstairs to the exit where there is a waiting area we filled with chanting and clapping for several more minutes. Security guards watched but took no action.
I was impressed by how broad a swath of the state we drew participants from: MDI, Calais, Deer Isle, Biddeford, Bangor, and Brunswick to name just a few. It was again a multi-generational crowd with college students at one end and boomers at the other. I love that.
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Some mainstream media coverage will follow. Here's the first one:
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