The occasion was the
First Annual Gertrude Welch Peace and Justice Award Ceremony. Sharat
began the formal presentation by explaining that the board had decided
to give an annual award to outstanding peace activists. They named it
after
Gertrude Welch because
during her life she had embodied the kind of thoughtful activism we
want to acknowledge. I was still getting out my camera when he
introduced Supervisor Pete McHugh, who did the actual presentations.
First Dr. Paul Larudee was given his
award. Then Greta Berlin got hers.
Miriam read a nice letter that
Congressman Mike Honda sent to acknowledge the importance of the event.
Click her picture to read it. Kathy Sheetz got an award to.
The awardees made brief "thank you, and
we couldn't have done it without all the efforts of all the other
volunteers" type remarks.
We had a nice flurry of flashbulbs
before breaking to share food and talk.
Spencer told me about how we need to
take our money out of banks that use exploitive investment strategies.
He is going to do a project to find the best small and local banks that
will do good with investment dollars.
Nothing would make Greta happier than
your visiting
FreeGaza.org.
She talked about her pride in being on the first boat to break the
Israeli blockade of Gaza in 46 years. She acknowledged that they had
caught the Israeli Navy by surprise, and since then it has gotten more
difficult to do it, but they are still going next year. She invited us
to go along on the next trip.
Dr. Paul Larudee has lots of great ideas for new ways to break the
Israeli blockade. Things like going in via airplane if they are going
to blockade the water approach. He was also talking about having
synchronized Rock Concerts in London and Gaza for more impact.
Sharat wanted us to know that the Israeli blockade is a slow strangling
of Gaza, and there is nothing innocent about it. One thing he showed
that appalled me was the way the Israeli Navy has shrunk the fishing
area available to Palestinian fishermen.
In addition to making it harder for
fishermen to ply their trades, the Israelis are building a wall to
prevent smugglers from bringing in food from Egypt and other places
like that. This not just a wall you can see, it goes thirty feet
underground with steel and sensors to detect tunneling.
The Israelis are also playing
language games. He illustrated this by showing what "Hamas"
means to the Palestinians and what it means according to
the Israelis. Apparently the Israels say it means "kill all
Jews", when the Palestinians want it to mean is "clean the laws that
make Israel possible off the books." It just sounded like the Israelis
are playing a "heads I win, tails you lose" game.
