R. Nesbitt | Red Phoenix correspondent | Maryland

On October 5, 2024, members of the Paddy Whalen Division of the American Party of Labor participated in a massive march and rally in Washington, D.C., held by the Palestinian Youth Struggle and other allied organizations and parties in protest of the year of open genocide waged against the Palestinian people. While those in attendance successfully saved the life of a protestor who self-immolated, mainstream media downplayed the intent of the protestor, minimized the heroic actions of those who responded on the scene while giving undue credit to police, and dismissed the clear messaging communicated by the event’s participants.

Perhaps an hour or two into the rally, alarm spread among the chief organizers as they looked at received texts on their phones. Shrieks and silence spread to the farthest reach of the crowd going down Black Lives Matter Avenue, before the White House. After a few minutes of growing confusion, with growing concerns among the APL members in attendance that agitators, Zionist civilians, or cops had provoked a violent confrontation with the rally, the speakers informed the crowd that someone, later identified as Samuel Mena Jr., had attempted to self-immolate.

Medics were dispatched as soon as the messages were sent out, before the crowd was informed, and the person was stabilized and transported for emergency care via ambulance. Fear and dismay permeated the crowd at the solemn news, but all were firm in their resolve to continue the rally and begin the march. The organizers extolled the martyrdom of Mena, and compared their resolve to that of Aaron Bushnell and others who have self-immolated to condemn the genocide against Palestinians and to draw attention to its ongoing status. In this spirit of condemnation, the march began and lasted for another three hours. 

Coincidentally, the end of the march brought the procession before the Washington Post headquarters, where speakers rightfully railed against the shameful coverage of this last year in Gaza — the attempted characterization of the onslaught as a “war” or “conflict,” trussing up the capabilities and intentions of Israeli expansionism and conflating the Palestinian people with Hamas. 

As if to prove the disconnected nature and the real interests of this pinnacle of capitalist press, that very night, as members of the Paddy Whalen Division disengaged, we observed a fresh article on the rally, describing Mena as a fanatical and disillusioned journalist who is entirely singular in their feelings of guilt — in their own words — of “the Palestinians killed because I allowed them to be branded as Hamas.” The Post also exaggerated the role of the Metropolitan Police, who were concentrated at the head of the rally, near the HQ of the Post and before the exterior gates of the White House, as having played a pivotal role in saving Mena’s life. There was no mention at all of the role of the medics of the rally who rushed to the scene, and only a passing remark on the direct response of the ralliers themselves in extinguishing the fire. 

The article goes on to minimize the size of the rally itself as “starting with a few hundred, and reaching up to a thousand” when the eyewitness accounts of American Party of Labor members estimated at least 1,500, not including bystanders on the street who accepted material from the march and temporarily joined in its procession. Alarm is raised by the Post about the march stopping before its headquarters and only seems to find it relevant to mention the demands for an arms embargo against Israel, which taken in this context is entirely inappropriate before the offices of the Washington Post. What this hit piece does not mention is the exposures and condemnation of the rally against the year of coverage by the paper on the genocide in Gaza. 

Not content to miss out on their streak of misinformation, the same article pivots from the march itself to contextualizing it with Hamas militants “pouring over the Israeli border” supposedly killing 12,000 Israelis. Of course the conservative death toll of 42,000 Palestinians is put last, after the veritable Hamas blitzkrieg that the Post clutches its pearls over. With perhaps a minuscule measure of self-awareness and desire to save face, the Post deigns to admit that Israel’s “Defense” Ministry does not distinguish in its calculations between civilian and combatant casualties. What an admission! Buried as it is at the bottom of the article, completely out of context in relation to an absolute misrepresentation of a popular action calling out this imperialist rag-factory. 

It’s no shock to the people, the advanced proletariat, and all paying attention, that the capitalist class lies through its press. It is conversely the obligation, the duty of the worker’s press, the people’s press, to expose them, especially in connection to our own actions of education, solidarity, and resistance. The police did not save Mena — the medics did, the demonstrators did, the EMTs did, retroactively as they can only do — the PEOPLE saved Mena in the middle of an act of martyrdom for a truly just cause. The police were busy forming a ring of bicycles around the head of the rally, before the major hotels and offices that rest outside of the White House and on the defenses of the White House itself. That is what the cops protect and serve, the property of their government and their class, not we the people who suffer at the hands of these institutions. Towards the end of the march, one MPD officer in white attempted to accost a photographer with the Palestinian Youth, waving his hand back to himself as if inviting a physical challenge and walking close behind the young man, before the cop was photographed full in the face and flipped off as cadre of the APL moved close with phones out to pressure the officer to back off. 

Whether we save our own from acts of self-violence, or from the hawkish pursuit of the flying monkeys of the MPD on their bicycles, or agitation against real journalists and demonstrators, the APL, the PYS, the people of Maryland, Virginia, D.C., and of the entire country, proved that only we can save ourselves — not cops, not journalistic hacks, and not the ruling class. 

Categories: Anti-War, U.S. News

Tags: Israel, Palestine