Denver, CO – In the evening of October 7, 40 people gathered at the front door of the Tabor Center in downtown Denver to commemorate two years of the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza. The event, organized by Denver Anti-War Action (DAWA), was a reminder of everything Palestinians have suffered both before and since October 7.
The Tabor Center has been a hub of pro-Palestine, anti-genocide activity since the slaughter began, as it is the home to the war profiteering company Palantir.
In a speech, the event emcee Eliot Howe said, “We are here today because we won’t let Palantir forget the over 186,000 murdered in Gaza.” Denver Anti-War Action has been pivotal, through its activism, in driving Palantir out of its downtown offices and into a smaller office park in Cherry Creek.
The mood of the event was somber. Effigies of dead Palestinian children, wrapped in burial shrouds, were laid on the sidewalk in front of posters displaying photos of the suffering of the innocents of Palestine.
DAWA speaker Maggie Gutberlet, who made the shrouds, stated, “Last night I made four shrouds. If you didn’t know, a shroud is a cloth in which we wrap our dead. ‘We’ as in Muslims, Christians, Jews, and last night I made four. I took four pillowcases, the right size for an infant child, and filled them with the general shape of loss – the low estimate for dead and injured children is 50,000, making each of my four shrouds 12,500 dead and injured children.”
The voices of those gathered echoed through the concrete halls of downtown Denver with shouts of “Shame!” as the appalling statistics were read aloud.
Dara Ollman from Jewish Voice for Peace stated, “A new poll that just came out saying that 61% of American Jews believe that Israel is committing war crimes, and four out of ten say that Israel is committing a genocide. As a Jew, we believe that every life is a universe.”
Finally, Hatem Teirelbar of DAWA took the stage and began reading the names of the martyrs. People laid down on the sidewalk in a die-in as the names of those newborns killed by Israeli bullets and American bombs echoed through the still, early autumn air. Teirelbar stood for 30 minutes, reading the names of martyred Palestinian children. When he finished speaking, he hadn’t even gotten through a third of the names of children martyred before their first birthday.
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