Former KC resident planning to join "Gaza Freedom March"
Help "Break the Siege": Support March for Palestinians in Gaza
A former KC resident and peace activist, Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, will join the Gaza Freedom March this December. He is planning to return to Gaza after his first trip with the Viva Palestina convoy that provided medical relief in July 2009 [see CJME report on convoy - http://cjme.org/viva-palestina-report2.htm ]. Due to an increase in airfare and travel costs, Emiliano is appealing to CJME Mideast peace supporters to support his journey to help break the blockade. [photo: Mario Sasso - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014280&id=1603907053]
The Gaza Freedom March is organized by the "International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza," which formed after Israel's 22-day assault on Gaza in winter 2008-09. The group consists of a diverse coalition that represents all faiths (and no faith) and is focused on human rights in conformance with international law. To mark the fact that is has been one year since the Israeli attack, the coalition is mobilizing an international contingent for a nonviolent march alongside the people of Gaza on Dec. 31, to end the illegal blockade.
The coalition conceives this march as part of a broader strategy to end the Israeli occupation by nonviolently targeting its flagrant violations of international law from the house demolitions and settlements to the curfews and torture.
In Emiliano's own words:
"I am a graduate student at UC Berkeley hoping to respond to the Palestinian call for allies to show up in Gaza on New Year's Eve to join them in a non-violent march to oppose the illegal US-Israeli blockade of Gaza. We will be marching to the wall which has penned in the Palestinian people for over three years in what is best described as an open-air prison, into and out of which people, goods, and needed aid can not pass. I have a long history of activism, with work on a successful divestment campaign at London School of Economics and direct action with the Palestine Solidarity Project/International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank, as well as ongoing divestment efforts at Berkeley, where we are using the Gaza Freedom March trips to raise awareness about the occupation."
Let’s all support Emiliano on his quest - http://apps.facebook.com/causes/390844. Donations from this cause go to CODEPINK-Women for Peace.
-- Citizens for Justice in the Middle East
LOOK WHO ELSE IS GOING! Some of you may also recognize another area resident planning to join the Gaza Freedom March – Hedy Epstein from St. Louis, Missouri, who has spoken to audiences in KC several times on her Middle East peace work.
Hedy Epstein was 8 years old when Adolf Hitler came to power. She remembers the Kristallnacht in Germany; the anti-semitism in school, the revocation of German citizenship, the burning of synagogues, and males over 16 being sent away to concentration camps. In 1939, when Hedy was just 14 years old her parents found a way for her to escape the persecution sending her on the Kinder Transport to England. Hedy never saw her parents again; they perished at Auschwitz in 1942.
After World War II, Ms. Epstein worked as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi doctors who performed medical experiments on concentration camp inmates. In 1948 she moved to the United States and became active in the civil rights and human rights movements. She has spoken in the US and Europe to audiences of schoolchildren, college students, and adults, appearing on both television and radio. She has visited the Israeli Occupied West Bank five times since 2003 participating in several non-violent demonstrations in opposition to Israeli government policies towards the Palestinian people. Ms Epstein has written many articles on these social issues. Her autobiography, available in German, is titled Erinnern ist nicht genug: Autobiographie von Hedy Epstein "Remembering Is Not Enough: The Autobiography of Hedy Epstein".
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