What does Gaza City and Fergeson Have to Do with Aberdeen?

In the face of so much bad news, I have struggled to say what is on my heart. Struggled to form words around horrific acts of violence and war. Two events, particularly, have captured my attention in the past few weeks. A whole people utterly cut off from economic possibility and bombed, as the world watched nearly 2,000 people die in Gaza, watched children bury children. And a young black man shot by police, triggering night after night of protest in the American town of Fergeson.



Something caught my attention last night. People in Palestine were sending tweets to protesters in Fergeson, MO advising them how to deal with tear gas. Two peoples, for a moment in cyberspace, united in a struggle for life.

Everywhere, all over the world, poor and oppressed and angry people are demanding life. They are refusing to lay down and die.

And, yet, I struggle for words.

I struggle because I grew up white and working class and what that means is that my people, so often, have believed so many lies. I grew up taught that black communities were violent and I grew up with racist slurs and deep prejudice. I grew up with Christian Zionism, a distorted belief that both unconditionally supported Israel and still believed Jews were going to hell, a macabre anti-Semitism married to political support for the state they believed would bring in Armageddon. I grew up, especially post 9-11, taught that Muslims and “Arabs” (because, all people in the Middle East were Arab) were dangerous terrorists who deserved bombing and death.

And there is nothing unique in that. Lots of white, rural, working class people have been taught the same.

I struggle because this breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that my people—that rural white people don’t realize that they have so very much in common with the protestors in Fergeson and the people of Gaza. More and more, the communities I come from are struggling to survive—struggling for life—struggling because they can’t get jobs or health care or decent housing, struggling because they too fill our jails and prisons, they too are at the end of their rope. They are not bombed, but the conditions of life are not so very different.

Yet, as always, we are isolated in our struggle, isolated because we believe what we have been told. About Gaza. About black people. About immigrants.

And about us.

We are told that our poverty is a result of our lack of initiative and hard work, our lack of good planning and good choices. We believe our poverty is our fault. And that belief holds us captive. The best way to enslave people is to convince them they deserve it.

At least in Gaza, at least in Fergeson, people know what they are up against. At least they know their suffering is not their fault. 

I dream of a day when towns like Aberdeen recognize common cause with struggling people all over the world—when Aberdeen joins Fergeson and joins Gaza City and joins the millions of people around the world struggling for life. When people in Aberdeen tweet people in Fergeson and Gaza City, demanding freedom and life and peace and wholeness together.