Mask Bloc NYC Statement on Palestine

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. 🇵🇸

[Palestine flag emoji]

Mask Bloc NYC condemns the US-funded genocide being carried out in Palestine by the fascist white supremacist Zionist settler-colonial “state” of "israel". We reject the propaganda that insists that this situation is anything other than an indigenous people doing its best to resist and survive a generations-old effort to displace, dispossess, and extinguish them from their own land.

As disabled organizers, we cannot ignore how settler-colonial occupation violently disables people and leaves them to die (see the already impossible orders to evacuate; imagine those with limited mobility, or who’d die if unplugged).

However, we also want to use this moment to call your attention to the USAmerican public’s complicity in genocide, in our inextricably linked struggle against extermination.

“israel” is working to manifest the end which all white supremacist colonization seeks: starving, traumatizing, injuring, disabling, displacing, dispossessing, and killing an oppressed people until they succumb by force.

Before this moment, “israel” achieved this using a tactic the so-called US employs every day: medical apartheid and mass death via deliberate negligence and organized abandonment. (Consider "israel"'s choice to withhold access to healthcare, medical supplies, and COVID-19 vaccines from Palestinians following the vaccine rollout.)

In the US, that same organized abandonment takes the form of propaganda claiming COVID-19 is not as dangerous and disabling as it really is (yes, even to the average “healthy” person), that its spread no longer needs to be mitigated by the state, and that medically vulnerable people will simply “fall by the wayside” as acceptable collateral damage.

This is genocidal and eugenicist logic that we must all reject.

The true death toll continues to be obscured by state negligence — with the removal of mask mandates, wastewater monitoring, and lack of accessible PCR testing — but we know that in the US, at least hundreds continue to be killed by COVID-19 every day, and the primary victims of this are poor and medically vulnerable communities — people of the global majority — who are already disproportionately disabled due to medical apartheid.

When you neglect your own responsibility in protecting these groups, you are aiding in their deaths and replicating colonizer behaviors.

The so-called US has a long history of leaving vulnerable people to die, so why do you trust the state when it comes to COVID-19?

Listen to our queer and trans elders who were abandoned by the state and left to die during the AIDS crisis, who recognize the parallels between then and now.

When COVID-19 first ripped through prisons in the so-called US, incarcerated folks were forcefully trapped and left to die with no PPE. Today, the state refuses to supply high-quality masks or the most recently updated booster, claiming that since there are no more mask mandates, they are not obligated to provide such protections. They prohibit sending PPE to those inside.

It is our collective responsibility to resist these efforts to disappear our communities into prisons, hospitals, and morgues.

We encourage everyone to continue pressuring their representatives, using their voices, and circulating news directly from Palestinians on the ground. The propaganda machine is cracking under pressure. Our best hope for pressuring the US into forcing a ceasefire (and eventually, the dissolution of the illegitimate and apartheid state of “israel”) is to loudly declare our solidarity with the colonized people of Palestine, and in large numbers.

However, as you do this, please remember your responsibility to your own communities to stop the spread of deadly pathogens, and to protect yourselves from police surveillance, by masking.

Remember: COVID-19 is an airborne disease, and despite misinformation, it still transmits outdoors (think of how smoke spreads).

To help protect those engaging in resistance, Mask Bloc NYC is looking to connect with New Yorkers who can take bulk quantities of masks to distribute at rallies and actions.

If you can help, please DM us on instagram at: @maskblocnyc
Or email us at: covidsolidaritynyc [@] proton.me

in solidarity with Palestine,
Mask Bloc NYC

#FreePalestine #WearAMask #FreeMasksForAFreePalestine