Image from the SSCN Website.
South Shore Ceasefire Now celebrates our community who continue to create inclusive, safe spaces opposing Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism on the South Shore.
Together we gathered for a vigil on October 5th at the West Dublin Community Hall to mark the grim milestone of one year of genocide in Gaza, 76 years of the ongoing Nakba, and to remember the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s illegal war. Community members convened for an evening to grieve, connect, and continue the work of resistance by writing to elected officials – demanding they act in accordance with international humanitarian law. We share a sentiment from Palestinian-American writer and journalist Mariam Barghouti, “If you must cry, cry – but cry together… Let the whole world weep. Let
the grief fall, and let it be the signal that something is terribly wrong with the world. If all we have left are tears, then let that too be a protest.”
We continue to be deeply disturbed and disappointed by the lack of response from elected officials to the thousands of Nova Scotians who have engaged in over a year of protest against Canadian tax dollars continuing to fund arms used by the state of Israel. From South Shore-St Margaret’s MP Rick Perkins’ racist rhetoric to MLA Becky Druhan’s silence toward the suffering of the children of Gaza, to the Zionist talking points echoed by provincial and federal leaders: they all send a strong message that they support and uphold the colonial project of the illegal occupation of Palestine.
A year of bearing witness to this genocide has changed us – it has propelled us to find our own voices, to find each other, and to speak out together against injustice. Over the past year the South Shore community has joined SSCN in protest through rallies and vigils, phone zaps, letter campaigns, petitions, fundraising, film screenings, and a benefit concert. While these local actions keep what is happening in Palestine visible on the south shore, it is the connections we’ve made that strengthen this rural movement most: building partnerships founded in solidarity with Free Palestine Halifax, Atlantic Canadian Palestinian
Society, south shore’s Petite Queer Pride, and many local small businesses. Through these relationships, we have learned that nothing ever was, or ever will be, more radical or disruptive to the status quo than forming multi-cultural and multi-class coalitions that build grassroots power, and that is what we will keep doing.
