One of the great institutions of Vermont’s political counterculture is speaking out today in protest against the scale of collateral death and injury in the wake of current Israeli attempts to truncate Hamas in Gaza.
Bread & Puppet Theater is staging a protest performance today at noon on the State House Lawn, and again this evening at the Bread & Puppet Theater Farm at 7:30 PM, on Route 22 in Glover, where they will replace their scheduled performance piece with Fire: Emergency Performance for Gaza.
Referring to their noon protest, Bread and Puppet has released the following in a public statement:
The protest will bring attention to the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the U.S. government’s support of the Gaza attacks. Tableauxs will depict Palestinian women with their arms raised over the death of their children. A bell of mourning will chime slowly next to large, black and white woodcut banners featuring such questions as “Why?”, “How Much Longer?” and “How Much More?”
The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate today, after the humanitarian cease fire was broken with an exchange of horrifying violence that has characterized the current crisis.
No resolution will ever be possible so long as both sides see themselves entirely as the victims and never accept any responsibility for being victimizers.
The righteous stalemate over Gaza is an odd sort of metaphor for the Right-eous stalemate in DC, where Republicans have worked themselves into a fever over the evils of progress of any kind, and especially of the progressive kind.
They cannot see themselves as anything but victims facing an alien surge, even though holding the pursestrings of the 1% gives them power the other side cannot even imagine.
‘Stupid, pointless and cruel: no matter what the conflict, the true “victims” are always overwhelmingly comprised of the weak, the poor, the elderly and the children.
“Sophie, we’re moving.”
“Why Heime?”
“Another schwartze family just moved in down the block. To Hell the neighborhood is going. Oi. It’s just like Harlem in 1908. The Palestinians I miss. The Hamas I even miss.”
“But Heime, you fought, and our son fought, to make this Land of Gaza our home. Where are we moving to?”
“California. More Jews California needs.”
“But what about our home here in Gaza?”
“The teenage gangbangers did you see, Sophie, when those new schwartzes moved in? Listen. Hear their boom boxes? Never they played the loud music did Hamas.”
“But I don’t want to move, Heime. We took so much grief to take over all of Gaza.”
“Yes, and now the Palestinians they have all the beachfront property in Lebanon. A Jew can never win. I’m going to call Aaron in Tel Aviv.”
“But Heime, our son is busy with the occupation of Syria.”
“An air strike we need here. Listen to that. And it’s Saturday, the sabbath. What is that, that whacka-whacka-whacka-boom-whacka-boom? The Nazis even they never played that kind of music.”
“Oh Heime……………………….
Speaking of Bread and Puppet, they also protested outside the 2nd PSB industrial wind noise hearing the other day. They’ve been an active (and noisily musical) presence at many of the protests against industrializing Vermont’s ridgelines.
Bread and Puppet understands the inherent value and importance of our intact mountain ecosystems and that selling them out and hurting mountain neighbors is just plain wrong and counterproductive at a time we should be protecting ecological services. Those services will become ever more precious as we jauntily keep on living large and insatiably on the Mothership.
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Back to your topic, Sue…
Living large in the U.S. today also includes sending emergency dollars and armaments to Israel so they won’t lose momentum in their quest for (???)
Where are all of the religious right to lifers’ as the Israelis shoot human fish in a barrel? I guess they’re harrassing womens’ health care centers and funneling money to the war on women.
It feels like a long slide down the rabbit hole……
Because of your refusal to compromise the truth & spit it wth panache is why I love your voice and miss your words. I was concerned about freaking out Milne but your back-and forth-with Rowley as a scream – both of you made me laugh to tears.
Can’t agree more. Entire nation may be under Huxtables thumb however & though he may silence the press, he cannot silence we the (lttle) ppl & who have spoken loud & clear though must admit I lmao as the true believers on left still claim some sort of perverse victory.
Forgive my propensity to withdraw & hide in the storm. I’m a wuss! When I can’t stop crying makes keyboard wet & we know what happens to wet keyboards. Blindsided by a bunch of stuff and dwelling in my safe little shell but now mad as hell – I have not been communicating w/anyone & barely my own family most of whom hate me anyways as I’m too right or too left depending on the shifting political winds.
Heartbroken at what is happening to our state & nation. Being ashamed of both is not an easy or comfortable place to be.
Mere words cannot express what I & other have been going through personally due to the aforementioned. For the first time we are considering selling out & living in our camper as we are finding it difficult to stay in the state I was born in going back many generations on both sides w/strong ties to NEK and he has calle home for most of life, due to the havoc wreaked by the right and now the left. VT is becoming a bedroom state & second-home haven for the 1%.
The rest of us will serve them in our maple republic after the green cards have been passed out to the ultra-wealthy barons & baronesses from abroad who love our tax-friendly-to-the-rich state & guv who extends a hearty welcome to the very wealthy. Hope you don’t hate me for flipping but the Dems are destroyying our state by merely holding on to power but doing nothing for their base or to better our state. Not much different from having the right back in.
Thinking of using some home equity to start a business in NH so I can become a citizen by living there 6mos & 1 day where I will have a REAL drivers license — not the “second class citizens card” VT offers we-the-unworthy. Considering the uncertainty in VT don’t know if VT is a good place though I did try. My plan would have had no one working over 30 hrs & no hc coverage however the fines leveraged could be a gamechanger.
“Clowns to the left – jokers to the right stuck in the middle” comes to mind…I actually hated this song as well as most 70s pop music. Dunbest music in history. Never thought being a mildish-mannered middle-of-the-roader could be so miserable.
Wait for it…