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Please join our “Feminists and LGBTQ+ People for a FREE PALESTINE” contingent in the Chicago Pride Parade, 10 am, Sunday, June 30 – details below.

Here’s why:

At least 40,000 Palestinians dead, 78,000+ injured, and 20,000+ children orphaned. By any reasonable definition, Israel’s slaughter and intentional starvation of Gaza is genocide.

As feminists and LGBTQ+ people we are appalled by this slaughter supported with endless streams of military hardware from the US government.

Israel is often presented by its supporters as an LGBTQ haven (“pink-washing”). But how does mass slaughter in Gaza and apartheid conditions in the West Bank help LGBTQ freedom, especially for LGBTQ Palestinians?

How does the destruction of every maternity ward, every hospital, every school, every university in Gaza, promote feminism? How does making over 1.7 million Palestinians homeless help?

Feminists and LGBTQ+ people have long opposed attempts by the far right to turn the US into a “Christian democracy,” making second-class citizens of all who don’t fit their anti-gay, sexist, and often anti-Semitic definition of Christianity. Likewise, we oppose the notion of a “Jewish democracy” in Israel which is as much a contradiction in terms as a “Christian democracy” is in the US.

Supporters of Israel are fond of branding the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as anti-Semitic. But they have no problem with Israel’s domination “from the river to the sea”; its 16-year Israeli blockade and deliberate impoverishment of Gaza, a densely populated territory the size of Chicago; and its more than half-century military occupation of a West Bank now honeycombed with illegal settlements.

Only if ALL PEOPLE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA have equal rights, with no racial-ethnic-cultural-religious group treated as second-class citizens, can there be lasting peace in a land that has only known war and grinding oppression for over a century!

Please join our contingent in the Chicago Pride parade, 10 am, Sunday, June 30 to demand:

** An immediate halt of US arms exports to Israel
** An immediate resumption of US funding of the UN Relief World Agency
** An immediate ceasefire
** An immediate and complete opening of Gaza to humanitarian aid currently being denied by Israeli forces
** The withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a halt to illegal land expropriations and settlement building in the West Bank

Endorsed by:
American Civic and Humanitarian Coalition
American Friends Service Committee - Chicago Peacebuilding Program
Arab Jewish Partnership for Peace and Justice in the Middle EastChicago Area Peace Action
Chicago Faith Coalition on Middle East Policy
Chicago For Abortion Rights
Coalition for Ethical Reporting on Palestine
Committee for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
Fox Valley Citizens for Peace and Justice
Green Party - Illinois
IfNotNow
Illinois Coalition for Human Rights
Jewish Voice for Peace - Chicago
Occupy Elgin
Party For Socialism & Liberation
Salon Kawakib
Songs for Ceasefire
Stop Trans Genocide
Tzedek Chicago

To have your organization endorse the contingent, please fill out this google form
bit.ly/FreePalestineAtPride. For more information, please email the Gay Liberation Network at [email protected]