At Puget Sound Sage, we organize for a living economy where Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities thrive and live in a sustainable relationship with land. Our purpose is rooted in a belief that justice for workers, climate and land are inextricably tied and that solidarity with Indigenous and colonized people is what directly challenges the continued exploitation of our people and our planet. Guided by these fundamental principles and the belief that all people deserve dignity; we join in Solidarity with the people of Palestine.
We fight for a world where land is not a commodity to be owned, dominated, and used to exploit others, but rather where the world’s precious gifts are shared amongst us all. Amidst racialized capitalism and settler colonialism, we know that economic violence and physical violence are used to maintain land and resources only for the few. This is true on Duwamish and Coast Salish land, and it is true in Palestine.
On a strip of land roughly the size of Seattle, 25,000 tons of explosives, the equivalent to two nuclear bombs, have been dropped, killing more than one in every 200 people in Gaza, half of whom are children. Last week, Seattle’s City Council joined cities across the nation in passing a resolution calling for a ceasefire. Thousands of people across Washington state have protested the genocide committed by the Israeli government. It is time for our Congressional representatives to listen to the pleas of the overwhelming majority of their constituents demanding a permanent ceasefire, an end to all military aid to the Israeli government, and to condemn the root causes of this moment: the ongoing Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestine.
Seattle is home to many of the world’s largest multinational corporations like Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, Google and Expedia that directly supply arms to Israel and profit from Israel’s apartheid, brutal settler colonialism and the continued bloodshed of Palestinian people. We lift up the Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions to End all Complicity and Stop Arming Israel and affirm the Palestinian-led movement calling for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) to stop the flow of billions of US dollars from fueling the Israeli war machine.
Standing with Funders for Ceasefire, Puget Sound Sage also “envisions a world where Palestinians live with freedom, dignity, and equality, with true safety for Palestinian people and Jewish people and a just peace in the region. In the face of so much pain and suffering, we call forth our deepest sense of humanity and justice, to build this possibility together, because we know that none of us are free until all of us are free.”
Join us now to take action against genocide and Tell Congress to End Complicity with Biden’s Genocide.
A Free Palestine is Worker Justice
Israeli bombing assaults on Gaza, which have occurred more than four other times before the latest assault, have targeted factories, warehouses and industrial facilities, pushing more than 45% of Palestinian workers into unemployment and more than 81% of Gazans into poverty. In recent weeks, Israel has attacked vital infrastructure including electrical generators, solar energy units, and more than 70 industrial facilities, resulting in 182,000 lost Palestinian jobs. So long as Gaza remains under the siege and occupation of Israel, there is no justice for workers.
A Free Palestine is Climate Justice
The Israeli war on Gaza is an environmental disaster on top of an existing environmental disaster. Clean water, clean air, food security, open space, and uncontaminated soil are core environmental rights that Israel has been denying Palestinians for decades and is now making worse through bombardment of Gaza. As staunch proponents of environmental and climate justice, we must demand that the rights to access, steward, and preserve environmental resources for future generations be returned to Palestinians through an end to the occupation.
A Free Palestine is Land Justice
Beginning with the mass dispossession and displacement of Palestinians, in what Palestinians call the Nakba (“catastrophe”) in 1948, Israel has used armed violence and economic violence to remove Palestinians from land their families have stewarded for centuries. The Israeli war on Gaza is yet another Nakba, which has displaced more than 1.68 million Palestinians through Israel’s ‘evacuation order’ and continued carpet bombing of all of Gaza.
We know that all our struggles for liberation are interconnected – our struggles to fight displacement and rectify dispossession in King County are addressing the same root systems of oppression as the Palestinian struggle for freedom. We envision a world of just and lasting peace and safety for Palestinian, Indigenous, Black, People of Color, Muslim and Jewish people. Our liberations are bound in each other; none of us are free until all of us are free.
art by Natalie Hinahara