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Hands Off March

Palestine Missing From ‘Hands Off!’ March

On April 5, protesters will converge on Washington to hold a massive march in support of Palestine. The President has changed since the last big event in DC, but many of the demands have not. Activists are calling on the United States government to stop bankrolling the genocide in Gaza and sever ties from apartheid Israel. The additional element this time around is the Trump administration’s vast deportation program, which has targeted multiple university students for participating in protests. “This movement is made of students, workers, teachers, artists, activists, healthcare workers, tech workers and people of conscience all over the world who will not back down in the face of repression and intimidation, and will never back down so long as Gaza is under attack,” reads a statement on the march’s website.

Why Are Hands Off Rallies Supporting NATO?

We are passionate supporters of all but one of the items on the Hands Off agenda for the April 5 rallies. We couldn’t agree more that the corrupt U.S. government should stop destroying, privatizing, firing, and giving away the post office, schools, land, Social Security, healthcare, environmental protections, and all sorts of essential public services. But we are deeply disturbed to see NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) on the list of items that we are rallying to protect. Many people believe that NATO is a peace-loving, defensive alliance, but the opposite is true. During the past 30 years, NATO has fomented a vast arc of violence stretching from Libya to Afghanistan, leaving villages bombed, infrastructure destroyed, and countless dead.