Hope Lies in Organizing
Friends,
I hope you’re having a good weekend. I’ve been focused on local issues as we come to the end of the budget season in city government, but today I was honored to give a speech on the escalating war in the middle east, and I wanted to share it with you.
Stay tuned for another, locally focused, email coming in the next few days. Monday night at 7 pm is the Council meeting where we take a vote on the Mayor’s budget - which he offered zero amendments to even after the public outcry about his misaligned priorities. Spoiler alert: I’m voting “no”. More details coming soon.
Below, please find the speech I gave today, which I am titling “Hope lies in Organizing”
In love and solidarity,
Jesse
I’ll give you a prelude to my speech today. I know this speech is longer than it should be, and thus I want to share the three main takeaways up front.
American money is the reason there is a genocide in Palestine and Lebanon.
Elected officials need to challenge this policy and put an end to it.
Leadership comes from workers, not from elected officials.
Today we look back at a horrific year. October 7, 2023 was not the beginning of the conflict in Palestine. This was set on its current course in 1948, with roots stretching back into Zionist thought and European foreign policy decades earlier than that.
But October 7, 2023 did mark the beginning of a drastic escalation in death and destruction throughout Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and likely soon Iran.
Nearly one year ago, on October 13, 2023, I gave a short speech near Monument Circle calling for an end to war and a cessation of hostilities on both sides. Already by then, Israel had shot to death dozens of Palestinians in the West Bank and had bombed hundreds of sites in Gaza. It had called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and made clear its plans to invade Gaza with ground troops.
One year ago I said,
“It’s impossible to understand this week without understanding how much American money has gone to Israel’s defense and intelligence operations, or how many US military bases exist around the world.”
That remains true. Without scrutinizing American foreign policy, it’s impossible to understand what has now unfolded over the last year.
We need to review a few facts that underscore the sheer size of the American military. The American military budget for this fiscal year is $849.8 billion. This represents over 40% of the military budget of the entire planet Earth, despite the United States consisting of 4% of the world’s population.
The US maintains hundreds of military bases around the world, in at least 55 countries. Our taxes pay for 228,000 US troops to be permanently stationed abroad. And remember, this is “peacetime”. This is at a time when our troops are, at least officially, not at war anywhere on Earth.
The largest air force in the world is the United States Air Force. The second largest is the United States Army Aviation branch. The fourth largest is the United States Navy. Each of these three branches has thousands of bleeding-edge aircraft, each one typically costing in the tens of millions of dollars.
And since the modern country of Israel has existed, it has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid generally and US military aid specifically. The US has provided over 300 billion dollars in military aid to Israel since 1946. Since well before October 7th of last year, the US had agreed to provide $3.8 billion a year, at minimum, through the year 2028. In response to the October 7th attacks, the United States promised another $8.7 billion this year.
To most American leaders, this is considered money well spent. To quote Joe Biden from 1986 when he first said it, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
Let’s talk about that a little bit. “Her interests in the region.”
What are those, exactly?
Peace and stability?
Let me read you a few quotes from an AP news story. “The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.” ““Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture,”
““Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history… It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
When do you think that news story was published? On my birthday, December 21st of 2023, ten months ago, and the bombing campaign has not stopped.
If the United States maintained such an immense and well-equipped army to preserve peace and save lives, we would be using that army to put a stop to such blatant escalation and mass murder.
Does our military exist to protect the oppressed and downtrodden?
Gaza had a 64% poverty rate in June of last year. The combined Palestinian economy had a gross domestic product of only $3,360 per person. Israel’s was $58,270. That is a 17-fold wealth discrepancy. Palestinians had an infant mortality rate six times higher than Israelis did. Maternal mortality was also six times higher in Gaza and the West Bank than in Israel. Again, all of these statistics are from BEFORE October 7th of last year.
So it is clear that if our military exists to stand behind the downtrodden, it would come to the aid of Palestinians.
No, our gigantic imperial military exists for one purpose and one purpose only.
And that purpose is to make sure the rich get richer and the poor stay in their places. The oil needs to keep flowing in the Middle East. The cobalt needs to keep coming out of the ground in Congo. The lithium needs to keep coming from Chile. And the profits need to keep consolidating into the pockets of the 1%. When democratic movements rise up to insist that they want a better deal for raw materials and trade policies, the United States military and intelligence services work to crush those movements every single time.
I’m talking to you about a foreign policy that sees genocide as a cost of doing business.. And again, it’s not an Israeli foreign policy, it’s an American one.
But when we say “American”, we don’t mean what the average person living in the United States wants. American voters are pretty clear in polls that we prefer to cut the country’s defense budget. Similarly, we are pretty clear in polls that a majority of people do not want to use more money to continue to send weapons to Israel.
Yet where are the elected officials who will dare to stand for these popular and moral positions? Our presidential candidates from both major parties refuse to so much as condemn Israel, much less withdraw the use of our tax dollars to fund the ongoing genocide. Our statehouse has responded to the genocide in Gaza by stepping up its relationship with Israel, buying Israeli bonds using tax dollars, and working to define any speech critical of an ethnostate as antisemitic.
At the city level, our failing Mayor has not said a word on the topic, and the City Council in our great wisdom has decided that a ceasefire, which by the way is the issue that has drawn more and almost unanimously supportive public comment than any other this year, is not something that can even be discussed, much less voted on. I remain the only City County Councilor who has publicly supported the cause of Palestine and demanded an end to the genocide. Not a single other Councilor has agreed to cosponsor the ceasefire resolution that they voted to ban from bringing to the floor month after month after month.
Other than a few brave souls in Congress like Representative Andre Carson and especially Democratic Socialists of America member Representative Rashida Tlaib, our federal government has been united in support for the genocide. It’s incredibly demoralizing.
But we cannot simply ignore electoral politics. We often feel as though the current corrupt and unresponsive political system is impossible to reform. But last year, the movement defeated the sitting Vice President of the Indianapolis City Council and replaced him with me, a proud member of the country’s largest socialist organization, without taking a dime of money from any organization at all. This shows a glimpse of what is possible if we loudly and clearly express what we demand from our politicians and show that we are willing to do whatever it takes to get those demands met.
I think every single person here who is eligible should register to vote. In Indiana, you have until the end of the day this coming Monday to register. Everyone should register, even if you don’t have a single person on your ballot that you believe in.
Everyone should register, and then everyone should send a message to each individual on your ballot. Ask them what they are doing to stop the genocide. Ask them what they are doing to put pressure on the federal government to institute an arms embargo. Ask them what they are doing to divest from Israeli companies and bonds. Ask them how they are supporting a boycott. Ask them what they are doing to impose sanctions. And expect an answer!
I am not telling a single person here to hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. Some may find that to be a reasonable strategy - and some may not. But don't let your response to a genocide start and end with just a vote. Speak up in your union, your place of worship, your neighborhood association. Ask others why our schools and roads and hospitals are crumbling while our money goes to killing families and children in Gaza and Lebanon. Ask politicians why they refuse to even acknowledge this truth. Make it crystal clear that you are extremely aware of what’s going on, and that you hold your leaders culpable for their silence. During a genocide, silence is complicity, and every quiet politician has hands stained red with the blood of children.
So I’m telling you to register to vote, and to vote for whoever you think will do more good for the world. I’m telling you to push your friends and neighbors to run for office to represent the common people and not the big capitalist interests.
But we obviously cannot just vote to get out of this mess.
The power to stop genocide lies with workers, students, and regular people.
Young people at universities across the country directly confronted their schools’ administrations, demanding that their tuition did not go towards funding Israel. In response, universities abandoned their principle of free speech and called in militarized police. Here in Indiana, Pam Whitten called in the Israeli-trained State Police to point sniper rifles at unarmed students. The incredibly brave students refused to be cowed and continued a months-long protest, suffering through blazing heat and summer thunderstorms alike both here in Indianapolis and in Bloomington.
Workers, organized together in their unions have also shown leadership. The National Labor Network for Ceasefire is comprised of over 200 unions across the country, united in their demands to stop the killing and end US military aid that enables it.
Those of you who are here today are doing your part. But it’s not enough. How could it be enough, while bombs continue dropping, children continue dying, and the world creeps closer to nuclear armageddon?
We must intensify our efforts. But the solution cannot be for each of the activists here to lose even more sleep, cry even more tears, and shout until we are even more hoarse. We need numbers. Politics begins in the millions.
When you’ve finished writing to the candidates on your ballots, take a deep breath, and knock on your neighbor’s door. Ask if you could have a cup of tea together to talk and get to know each other better. Ask what your neighbor’s hopes and dreams are. And then, share your fears and sorrow, and ask your neighbor to join you at the next rally.
Do the same with your coworker. Do the same with the person in the pew next to you when you worship. Do the same with the person in your fantasy football league.
It can feel incredibly uncomfortable to have these real and raw conversations with people. But that is the only way to organize. And organizing is the only path to overthrowing the current system of prioritizing bombs over food, bombs over housing, bombs over healthcare.
That's why I'm a democratic socialist and a member of DSA. We can't fight the US war machine alone. The ruling class is organized for their interests, and so the working class must out-organize them. If you want to be part of an organization that is committed to Palestinian liberation and making our economy and society work for all people, join DSA. I wouldn't be here without my socialist comrades.
I want to end with two quotes. The first is from Ursula K. LeGuin, a science fiction author whose work reminds us that a better world is possible.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
The second quote was from the famous anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti. In 1936, the fascists in his country of Spain were destroying civilian areas, much like we see in Gaza and in Beirut. The devastation was everywhere, and people were losing hope. I go back to this quote when I find myself losing hope, and it always inspires me. I want to leave you with this inspiration today. Durruti said,
“For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.”
Keep fighting. The better world is growing like flowers in the cracks of the pavement. There is not the slightest doubt about it - from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Solidarity forever.