On October 1st, the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, a group of Santa Fe New Mexicans inspired by Jijmegen, Sweden, began reading the names and ages of people who have died in Gaza since October 7, 2023. There are 828 Jewish Israelis on this list, and nearly 69,000 Palestinians.
The book of names is 1200 pages long. Some individuals have five or six names. I imagine parents naming each child, honoring ancestors, wanting protection for their newborn. The Arabic names are rarely familiar. We readers do our best.
In a two-hour slot (over 120 total hours), four of us take turns reading a total of four pages each. I'm wrapped in several layers - and still, relentless wind keeps me cold, aware of my comforts, which Gazans and so many others likely do not have.
During our two-hour slot, all but a handful of the names we read are children six and under.
We read at Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Catholic church, under a statue of Our Lady. We have a lectern, a microphone and, at sunset, a lamp, near two benches and a handful of folding chairs for visitors.
Santa Fe Witnessing for Gaza invites other cities to create similar events.
RESOURCES ABOUT PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI HISTORY and REMEDIES
In earlier substacks, I listed films that teach Palestinian-Israeli history: In a dark time, Roethke said, the eye begins to see, and Imagining a techno-sustainable Palestine.
No Other Land, a new film by Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, shows his community, Masafer Yatta, destroyed by Israel's occupation - while he built an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist. Click Here How to Interfere with the War Machine. Will Falk describes how Columbus, Ohio's anti-preemption city charter amendment provides an example of a municipality's intervening in genocide and protecting the environment.
JP Hill reports that resistance is everywhere - it just isn't getting enough attention. European unions have called for a massive general strike for Gaza. U.S. Americans have shown up to resist when ICE tries to take their neighbors. The Debt Collective and tenants of Equity Residential, the nation's fifth-largest apartment owner, just announced a rent-debt strike. Trailer park tenants are forming tenant unions.
Rethinking Rural Living in the Sahara: A Manifesto for Water and Food Sovereignty in Algeria by El Habib Ben Amara. Across the Algerian Sahara, we are not lacking land, sunlight, or ancestral knowledge. We lack a bold and rooted vision that reconciles humans with the land, the climate, and their future. This manifesto calls for a profound shift in how we relate to the desert. It argues that rural housing in the Sahara should no longer be seen as a burden, but as an opportunity - a strategic lever for food, water, and ecological sovereignty in Algeria. If Palestinians receive land (including, perhaps, Gaza), could this manifesto provide a blueprint?
A POEM from Joseph Fasano:
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