Gaza Freedom Flotilla - Reportback (2024)

Chris Mato Nunpa: One of the origin stories from the Bde Wakan, who are the people of Spirit Lake, their origin story, one of the things that Nujimaaka, Grandmother Earth, told them— by the way, it was a female god that produced humans. So she's kind of different from the Old Testament Genesis.

Barry Riesch: Anyway, in there, he— Yeah.

Chris Mato Nunpa: In there, the storyteller says that that Ujimaka, when we talk, when we pray, you know, we keep our eyes open, and because we didn't have churches, so we and then we look up, and sometimes some of our some of our people some of our people. Even raised their arms because the storyteller, which I heard 3 times, he said that that's a universal sign of surrender, that you surrender completely to Tunkashiro Wakantanka, Grandfather Great Mystery. And so, and then keep your eyes open. So like for me, since we didn't have these churches, when we prayed, we looked up at the sky, and that's what I'll be doing.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Barry Riesch: I want, you know, be closing my eyes.

Chris Mato Nunpa: And it's— and it's, again, it shouldn't be a competition that one way of praying is better than another.

Barry Riesch: Our people don't think that.

Chris Mato Nunpa: Our people, one of our ceremonies teach us to respect another person's vision. And so we have something we call the— oh, geez, my mind goes blank, but I'll remember it later.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Chris Mato Nunpa: So I will offer a prayer here, brief prayer, and I'll try to give a translation of it as well. We will pray. Oh,成康时我康成康，有等我是阿肯那公王无事的，我那开阿佩特托克者我，代安盖阿黑皮。And for that，嗯嗯嗯，乌比达成康。 Um, and for all these blessings, we— We offer our gratitude. And we say thank you to you. And also tonight, we ask that you look down upon them, have mercy upon them, and grant unto them. 然后，土干石头啊，康卡康卡多耶，人呐，瓦牙子坑皮皮，然后，然后库迪亚黑土啊，嗯，乌石尾茶的三粒尾茶叶的。嗯，大家之间的友谊啊，友好比的，打过乌鸦皮，打过乌鸦肉肠皮，然后打过猪骨皮，黑瓦子打瓦屎皮，然后打瓦坑皮。 What I basically said was that Grandfather Great Mystery, that's our name for our God. And people, some people all say we worship the same God. No, we don't worship the same God, you know. The Old Testament God said, kill everything that hath breath, leave nothing alive that breatheth. And I don't know from our— from our stories, our songs, our prayers, our teachings, our values, we have— our God never said anything like that.

Barry Riesch: Kill people.

Chris Mato Nunpa: Kill everything that hath breath, leave nothing alive that breatheth. Never, never had Our God said anything like that. But yet, white rich— and I think white Christians, when they go, their ministers haven't talked about their Yahweh, Yahweh Sabaoth. That means I went to a seminary, even. That's how lost I was. Anyway, anyway, I— what was I going to say about that? That, oh, that they worship a military god. Yeah. Translation is translation for Yahweh Sabaoth is one who musters armies. So it was a military god that white Christians worship. But of course, their ministers won't tell them that. It's kind of like the priests when they started when they started the Christianity. They what's Speak in Latin, preach in Latin, sing in Latin. And, and, and the peasants, of course, didn't understand any of that. So there's an aura of magic for them toward the priests. Anyway, I said that, and I said to him, thank you for bringing us safely to the end of another day. And we thank you for your many blessings, for food, for health.

Barry Riesch: Mm-hmm.

Chris Mato Nunpa: We thank you for our life, and we thank you for our people, our relatives and family. And we thank you. We remember tonight the sick, the ones who are undergoing hardship, and the ones who are grieving. And we ask prayer for them, and we thank you for your helping. And so, and I just said, according to your goodness, I pray, naku taku wadaki umshia wakam. What I have asked for, I ask in humility. So that's what I said.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Barry Riesch: Yeah, so thanks, Chris. You know, it's important that we hear from our indigenous brothers and sisters. So much of what's happening in the world, of course, is because of us. Colonizers, you know, colonizers in this country, colonizers in Gaza, you know. And I just ask that we just take another moment, just remember this day and every day for the last 7, 8 months what has been that innocent slaughter of children and women, especially in Gaza, that we take a moment to pause and think about that, you know, as our lives, you know, as the lives we live in this country and the kind of suffering that my country is inflicting.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Barry Riesch: Around the world. We just be able to take a moment of pause for those people. Okay, so thanks again for coming out. I just give brief— I don't know exactly what's going to come out of me tonight, but something. But I do have some footage that I want to show. I have some pictures I want to show. I'll talk a little bit. Most of you probably— most of you know me. I thought I'd just do kind of a little history of what— and then you're going to hear Mr. Buffalo now. You want to go up and say something? You want to come up?

Speaker 3: Sorry.

Jeff Berger: Chris covered it.

Barry Riesch: Okay. I already did. But anyhow, so I'll talk for a little bit. I just kind of wanted to do a little bit of a history. People don't know me. I'm kind of what— most people do know me, I should say that. But kind of what led me to where I am today in my life. Or I'd be taking a trip off to attempt to go to Gaza. I was a U.S. Army veteran. I went to war at 20 years old. And when I went to war, I just— I went basically by dropping out. I flunked out of college. I got thrown into workhouse for disorderly conduct, and I lost my deferment, and I got drafted. And that's the trajectory that my life was on.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: Back, back in that period of my life. And so anyhow, I went to Vietnam and came back and pretty disillusioned and really, you know, not, not, not really able to deal with what I experienced there. And it wasn't until I got— in 1978, I got into alcoholism recovery and started becoming awake. So my real awakening happened about 1978. I mean, basically all I knew about prior to that was Drinking and partying and getting in trouble. I mean, that was the story of my life. Or girls, too. I was interested in women. But anyhow, that's the path I was on. And anyhow, that— but I went basically through a spiritual awakening in 1978.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: And from that, you know, as I became awake, I started dealing with the war business. I started becoming environmentally aware, you know, and I just— I had to narrow my focus. I picked war. as my primary focus. That was like 1978. Basically was on my own with that, a solo veteran. I didn't know about— I really didn't know about Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I didn't know about Veterans for Peace. Found these guys in '91, and I've been an active member ever since '91, doing what we call, with our national executive director that just kind of retired— we got a new executive director now— but what he calls putting out fires. I've been putting out fires, you know, at least since 1978. And again, and the fires continue to rage, and they rage, and they rage, and it's gotten worse and worse and worse and worse. And, you know, I have a goal in my life. My primary goal that motivates me day to day is to leave the world a little better place. And I don't— I don't feel like— I don't feel that. I don't feel very good that the world has gotten worse and worse in my lifetime.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: You know, it's not rewarding work, antiwar work, and we just have not finished. But anyhow, that's the focus of my life. And so anyhow, so I've been, over the years, of course, I've been aware of what's happening in Israel and Palestine, and the horrible mistreatment, especially of the children. You know, it just drives me crazy. And to me, it's always been kind of like David and Goliath, you know, that they throw a rock and they get, you know, rockets and mortars, and just, it's just so unbelievable, just children.

Speaker 3: Right.

Barry Riesch: And I've been watching that for years. And, and I've known about the flotillas. I've known Anne Wright. I've known Anne Wright.

Chris Mato Nunpa: I knew her.

Barry Riesch: She joined Veterans for Peace. I've known about the flotillas, but it's not ever been like my thing, you know. You know, I've been interested, but it's never something that I really thought personally about doing. But then as October 7th happened, you know, I just knowing, knowing what had happened just for the simple acts, the Palestinians, how they're always— I just knew as soon as that happened. It's just like 9/11. When 9/11 hit, I knew we're in trouble. You know, here goes our freedoms. You know, we're screwed. And same thing with Palestine. When October 7th happened, I knew that it was going to be bad. I mean, I knew this is going to get really, really bad for the Palestinian people. And from that day, from October 7th forward, you know, as they started dropping bombs, and I said, I just, I put my life on hold.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: And I said, I just had this sense of urgency. I just, you know, this has got to stop. This can't happen. And we've been pounding away, you know, trying to stop the madness, and it continues. I mean, now we're in Iraq. It just gets worse and worse and worse. It just pulls at my heart. I can't even tell you. You know, it just—

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Barry Riesch: That's all I've done for the last 6 months, 7 months, is do what I can do to stop the madness, you know? And Colleen and I have been a team. There's a group of us that have gotten together and done a bunch of different things. Anyhow, so about on March 29th, we had a— there was a gal coming to town, Awadi. I thought I'd put my cheat sheet out now for names. I don't— I'm not good with the names, but Awadi was coming. Awadi? Yeah, it's Awadi. Awadi?

Speaker 3: I don't have it in front of me.

Barry Riesch: Yeah, but anyhow, so she was scheduled to come to town. March 29th, she was scheduled to come to town at the University of Minnesota Wiley Hall, and I put her on my calendar, and I was going to go to her. I didn't know what she was going to talk about. I just, I thought she'd kind of cue me if I go watch her, listen, see what she has to say. No, you get that. Okay. But anyhow, so nonetheless, so, but at the same time, we do the weekly vigil, and Sarah had asked if somebody could come talk at the Friday vigil. And, and, you know, so I said, sure, somebody should come, so I'll go do that. So I just, I thought I was not going to be able to see this woman. And so, but it turned, as it turns out, somewhat synchronicity, she was speaking here that evening. So I got to come and, and hear Hawaide speak. You know, I never, I never did pronounce it in front of her either. But anyhow, there's a lot of those names that, you know, I mean, a lot of people that we met that I can't tell you, you know. But anyhow, so I came and she talked about the flotilla, and I said, wow, that sounds like a good thing to do, because I'm kind of on what do I do next, you know? What do I do next?

Chris Mato Nunpa: Sure.

Barry Riesch: This kind of fit right into my program. What do I do next? And so she had a thing of paper that she handed out with a QR code where she wanted people to sign up for it. So I signed up, got approved, and then I started researching. I started What am I going to get myself into? You know, I didn't really know. And, and so, but I got a hold of Anne Wright and I called. She in fact called me and told me that I was okay for the trip. And by the way, I've done a multitude of these. I went to— I went back to Vietnam in '91 to do repair work. We built a medical clinic. I've been to Iraq. We went to Iraq for the water treatment plant. We're still doing that in 2000. I've been to I've been to Cuba on mission. I've been to Chiapas with— it was Brian Wilson. I went with a delegation with Brian Wilson into Cuba. My last— the last trip that I did was to Jeju, South Korea, Jeju Island, where they're building a Navy base in Jeju. And on the return of that trip, I had a pulmonary embolism. And I said I had blood clotting that happens on—

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: When you don't get up and exercise on it. And so that was kind of— I thought that was kind of the end of the line for me, those kind of trips. And so, but anyhow, but this came up and I said, well, this sounds worthwhile. But, you know, so I'm talking to Anne, right, about it. She was on that Jeju trip, by the way. And she started telling me about it. She didn't hold back. She just said, you know, possibly, you know, worst-case scenario is they'll kill us. You know, it's certainly, you know, I mean, it's very entirely possible because they're crazier now Than they were in 2010. You know, I'm going to show you excerpts of 2010 on the thing tonight, but they're crazier now. And this is what Colleen would tell me that over and over. Well, you know, Barry, they're crazier now. But anyhow, but I didn't really— I didn't seriously consider that. But I did— the thing that scared me, I wasn't really scared about, and I still am not, about getting shot at.

Speaker 3: Shot at.

Barry Riesch: I don't want to get hit, but I want to— I look at them hiding behind the can on the boat there. Yeah. But anyhow, the thing that really freaks me out is, you know, as an alcoholic, you know, I used to get arrested periodically. And being in jail never really bothered me. I mean, I was just laid, you know, it wasn't a big deal. But now it is. And I have a phobia. I have a phobia, claustrophobia. I've always had it since I was a kid, but it's gotten worse. I don't like flying on airplanes. You know, I don't like being in elevators. You know, and the thought— and Anne talked about the fact that what would most likely happen It's they capture the boat, they take us in, 3 days, 3 days in prison in Israel and taking away all of our communication. Said, just bring whatever, bring whatever you don't care about because they're going to take it all, including maybe your medicine stuff, and you have no communication. So that thought of 3 days in a jail freaked me out, really freaked me out. And I'd come and go. So I started waffling that first week before I really committed.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: After signing the paper, I waffle. You know people know. I mean, people know Mike. You know most of you know how I waffle. You know, it was a big deal. And then, but finally, kind of what helped push it over. First of all, I you know we talked about heroes, and and when I got to see the list of other people, other U.S. people that were going to be a part of the delegation, this helped me. Colleen was on there, and Badia Benjamin, and Anne Wright, and One of my real heroes, Matt Ho, from our group was on there. So I said, they're going, I'm going, you know. But then I get into another, then I start waffling about something else, you know. But another thing that really helped push me over, because I thought we'd be on the boat with the aid. I thought we'd be on them. And I said, well, you know, they're going to question it. You know, they're going to question it for weapons or whatever being on there. And but anyhow, but we had a 2-hour— during the UNAC conference, I had a 2-hour conversation with all the people from the United States. And Anne assured us that it was not going to be a suicide mission. That felt, that felt pretty good. That was one of the good news in that we weren't going to be on the boat with the aid. The aid, separate, totally separate boat. But, and then we got 2, like 2 other boats with passengers on them. And so, so that helped just to know that I didn't have to be on the aid boat. And so then, then, you know, play whatever scenario you want. But the worst part about the whole thing is not knowing. You don't know what the hell's going to happen, you know. And, and, and, and I got there, and, you know, so I had phobia getting there. And then my first night in the hotel room, I'm freaking out. Get me out of this place. The further I get away from home, get me out of here, get me out of here. And then, you know, I was ready to go. I was ready to go. We were supposed— we got there to train on the 18th, and we were supposed to leave the 21st. And I, I was— I mean, I was, I was going. I was gonna go. We had our, we had our nonviolent training. A couple of days of that, and it was very, very realistic, you know, because it was there.

Speaker 3: The—

Barry Riesch: what they were assuming, probably the minimum, is that they get on the boat and, you know, hassle us and then arrest us all. So that's what we trained for. And it was, you know, these guys really did a job on us, you know, with the noise and thunder. And we got it. We had our little affinity groups that we broke into. You had to select a group, an affinity group for when you get on the boat, who you're going to be your buddies. And I, and I, I picked the— I picked this group of my partner's daughter, Jessica, Jessica, from Malaysia. And there was a group, a really, really beautiful group of Malaysian men and women, you know, that have been part of this. The fact that one of the older guys in the group, his wife was on earlier. But anyhow, so I picked this international group of— it was like 5 Malaysians and me and other Veteran for Peace and myself. And this was our affinity group. And I just am going into the wrong path on this. But anyhow, so we had to pick these groups, and then we would— so in this practice session, we would decide how we're going to react when they'd come on and they were hitting us and shoving us and stuff like that. And we just decided early on that we're going to just like hold hands, you know, because And support each other, show these soldiers that we're not afraid of you, but we want to stay together as a union. But as they tried to separate us, we just spontaneously grabbed ahold of each other and held on and resisted.

Chris Mato Nunpa: Wow.

Barry Riesch: And then after that went through, then we had a question, okay, so how did your group, Infinity Grove, do? You know, and then the whole question is, is it better to just be there passive, or is it better to resist? You know, well, you know, if you're going to block an intersection, you want to be together. But in this case, they're going to get you anyhow. They're going to arrest you anyhow. And the more you piss them off, the more they're going to be harsh on you. So that was a lesson that I learned. I didn't really know that. You know, I'm not a big arrestee kind of a person. I kind of avoid that. But I did, you know, at the— another thing at October 7th happened.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: I said, you know, I was ready to do whatever is necessary. But I said, I'm willing to get arrested, but it's going to be for the right thing. So this was the right thing for me. I was ready. I was ready to be arrested for this thing. And so we learned some mercy. But I just want to say, this group, this most wonderful group of men, it was just— they're just beautiful. And their hope to grow the Malaysian people. So anyhow, so that was the training. And then in the 3 days, we got to know each other. The best part about the whole trip, of course, Is the people, you know? You know, we had like they you know people kept dropping off. You know, I heard when I left here they were they were predicting like a thousand people going to be on this boat. You know, and when it actually came down, pushed the shove, you know, we had like forty minutes. Those I think are you know else didn't get down to thirty-five. We had like a hundred fifty, you know, people just from you know from around the world. But it was like. 40 countries represented, multiple languages, and just really, really people that have been on the boat before. But just, I want to show some pictures. I don't want to do a lot of it. But anyhow, that was the best part for me was the people, you know. So I have my inner anguish at night, you know, not sleeping and just ruminating about what the hell's going to happen, you know. So that the first— so the 3rd, 21st came, we didn't go.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: Oh, shit, you know. And then, and then, and then we, you know, she'd wait. Okay, so 2 days. And, and they were screwing around with us from the beginning. You know, the United States government and Germany were there working on, working on Turkey to not let us go. My US government did not want a US citizen to get on that boat and deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. My government did not want it. And so we didn't, we didn't know. Up until the time. So anyhow, so they were, but they were screwing around with us. We had to take the boat to this town or put, you know, 2 days, put the boat here. And we knew that delay is a tactic. We knew that delay is a tactic. And as you prolong things, then people are going to drop off. And that's exactly what happened. As King Kong, you know, Medea left like after the second day, you know. And so anyhow, so that, so I went through that and then 2 more days and get, you know, and a little more frustrating. 2 more days. And you're starting to wonder, is this thing going to leave? You know, is this thing going to leave or not? How much— how many more days am I going to hang in here with this thing and drive myself crazy or go home? You know, and so the day— 2 days before we were to leave, I went to Anne and I said, you know, I was really— I was pretty seriously waffling. Other people were leaving and asking the same question. And I went to Anne and I said, because they talked about getting us out of the hotels. Yeah. And onto the boat. But they say once you're on the boat, you're not getting off. So I had visions that we get on that boat and we have to sit in the harbor for four days and not go anywhere. I I didn't want that. I didn't want to sit down. If I'm going to get on that boat, we're going. And so I asked Anne that the morning that we heard from Gideon Buzo. I said, "Anne, so so what's the story?" She says, "Barry, if we go, if we actually go to the boat and customs is there and lets us through." We're gone. She says, if the customs isn't there, that means Turkey doesn't want us to go. So that was still— that was that morning. And then that Friday, that evening was when the announcement came that Guinea-Bissau had pulled the flags on the boat, which Israel had— they had just— if you look, if you Google Guinea-Bissau visits Israel in the early part of March, they visited, you know, basically buddy-buddy with Israel. And they talked away, came away, how good buddies they were. So Israel pressured, you know, so they have to— in order to sail the ocean, you have to have flags. They have to be— and I can't tell you the reason exactly for it, but you're supposed to have countries' flags in order to legally sail. And so they pulled the flags, and then they made a bunch of unrealistic requirements. And so basically that stopped us in our tracks. And so that night, our leaders said that, listen, this is what You know, it's a minor snafu, but we just, we think it's better for you guys to go ahead and go home and then come back when we got that stuff in order. So it's not stuck. You know, it'll go again, but there's still no guarantees that they're going to get out of harbor. And knowing too that if they ever do get out of harbor, you don't know what's going to happen. You know, my vision was that they block us somehow, but I really didn't, even though I redid my will, You know, and I had people— my family didn't want me to go. I mean, you know, my daughter-in-law says, you know, I don't want to have to tell them babies that you're not coming back, you know. And I mean, it was serious. I mean, it was serious stuff. I did my will and all that. And my sister, I didn't want to tell her because she'd totally freak out, you know. But anyhow, so what was good about it is that my telephone reception was so good out there. And I was And able to call my wife. I kept— and I keep— I had a number of group people that I keep posted. I send pictures and try to keep people abreast of what was happening. But that really helped my partner Denise, especially getting pictures, just like I'm touring Istanbul, you know. And Istanbul is really— I mean, it wasn't like it was torture necessarily being— it was torture at night, but not—

Chris Mato Nunpa: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: And we kept busy. And it's really a pretty remarkable 23 million people. And that's not counting tourists, where there's probably another 23 million tourists. Coming in there. But it's just a really— it's really an A place. And we were in the very holy, holy part of the old part of Istanbul. That's why I show a couple pictures. But yeah, I know people are anxious about me taking too much time here. But the— so anyhow, so that part's done. And, you know, just like, you know, just like when I was in the service, you know, people— the question that I get is, are you going back?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Chris Mato Nunpa: But did you get on a boat?

Barry Riesch: You know, it's like when I, when I got back from the service, people go, well, did you see combat? Or did you shoot somebody? That's what people want to know. So I feel, feel like somewhat of a failure because I'm not good. I'm not going back. And I won't be getting on that boat. It's not likely. So I feel maybe it's incomplete. But we did the best that we could. And, you know, we raised awareness all around the world. We had all kinds of media. I felt really good about the Washington Post article in particular. And, you know, we raised awareness all around the world. We had And all kinds of media. I felt really good about the Washington Post Mary article in particular. doing all kinds of stuff, keeping us active around. So I felt really good about the fact, just the purpose of it. The purpose of it, of course, was to get the aid to Gaza, but it was also to call attention to the 17-year siege that Israel has had on Gaza. This has been going on for years, and they have— it's totally illegal. They have no business doing it. And they act with impunity. They shot this The USS was called Liberty or Cole, 1960s.

Speaker 3: Liberty. Oh yeah. USS Liberty. Yeah.

Barry Riesch: Get a bump on that.

Speaker 3: That's a good sign.

Barry Riesch: But anyhow, so it's just totally outrageous what they try to do. And I just, I won't go on and on about it. I want to show you just a couple, a few minutes of what became on the 2010 on the Mavi Marmara. Marmara. Marmara.

Speaker 3: Marmara. Marmara.

Barry Riesch: Bobby, Bobby and Mamar.

Speaker 3: Whatever.

Barry Riesch: So either that or I do my pictures by— breeze through my pictures first and maybe show that.

Speaker 3: What do you want to do?

Barry Riesch: Would you rather see the footage first or would you rather see my picture? Maybe do the footage first and then I'll share it up with my picture.

Speaker 3: Pictures.

Barry Riesch: I think we have to get the light back there or something.

Speaker 3: Yeah, why don't you just turn the lights off and I run to the screen.

Barry Riesch: So this is some actual footage of the Bibi-Mamara. And they showed us this in our training. Yeah, I took hundreds of pictures. They asked me, a pastor asked me to try to reduce them down to a manageable number. So we'll just breeze through them. Go ahead. Everywhere we'd go, everywhere we'd go, we had a send-off demonstration with 20,000 people having a vigil behind us. And then after the trip was called off, we had 2 more vigils. One on that, one over on the— you know, this is where the East divides the West, Asia, Europe. You know, that's what Istanbul is all about. So anyhow, everywhere we would go, just tremendous support, just tremendous support. This is my affinity group. These are the— and there was one other guy, Scott, from Vietnam, or an Iraq vet from Hawaii. Go ahead. Keep going.

Speaker 3: Leave it alone. Okay.

Barry Riesch: Okay.

Chris Mato Nunpa: Well, come on.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Barry Riesch: This is this is this is Ahwadi. Here's Anne.

Speaker 3: Ahwada. Ahwada.

Barry Riesch: Ahwada. Sorry, Ahwada. And this guy here, what's his name?

Speaker 3: Come on.

Jeff Berger: Isma.

Barry Riesch: This guy here, IHH is the is the organization that put this all together. They do worldwide humanitarian aid work. They spend millions and millions. They bought all the boats. They bought the aid. And he's— this guy is a big part of that. He would be our nightly liaison with that group. And his father was killed on the 2010. And this, I got this one because of the mixture of the flags. That's Colleen. That was Colleen right there. This was the therapist.

Speaker 3: That's great.

Barry Riesch: And here's all the women. This is a lot of the Malaysian women, just beautiful people, just really great. And she was on the Mavi Mahrara II in Marmara. And that was one of my favorite shots right there. And she actually was part of the Malaysia group, but she lives in Wales. And then so here we would have nightly meetings.

Speaker 3: Damn right.

Barry Riesch: Yeah, and always hardcore dedicated. And it was in multiple languages, so we'd have to every night have people do interpreters. It wasn't all US. And just, you know, I just had— these are my favorite kind of pictures. This is the kind of picture that I like to take. And this is just— we have that second time that the trip was canceled. We would— we always said, what do we do? What do we do? And I put out an action call to Veterans for Peace National to send it to our membership, a call to action to call your legislators and tell them to let that boat go and grant us safe passage. I went to my— I went to all of them before I left. I had a letter there. I said, I'm I want you to— I want you to do your power to make this boat go and get it through safely. That's your— that's within your power to do that. So anyhow, so we— anyhow, stop. That building there was— we went to the US consulate in Istanbul to work with this, to talk to somebody from the State Department there. And this is a brand new—

Speaker 3: Wow.

Barry Riesch: Multimillion-dollar. This goes into the hill up here, a big building up here. Now we've got how many homeless encampments around this country? And here, this is just the US consulate. You know, there's security and cops and people working there, just the consulate. And in Iraq, I guess they have one as large like a baseball field.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Barry Riesch: You know, the embassy in Iraq. So this is how our tax dollars go. This was really the highlight of the trip for me. This is Nelson Mandela's grandson, and we call him Chief. Yeah, it's just a beautiful man. And, you know, when he first came in, everybody freaked out. They wanted to run up and get a picture and picture, picture, picture. And he, you know how we are. And he said, listen, you guys, I'm here. I'm here for you. I'm staying as long as you need to get in, as long as it need be to get your picture or get whatever you want. So this is the—

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: The US, most of the US delegation and him there. And this is, you know, just another group. This is Ty Barry, and he's coming in. He's with— he's Medea Benjamin's cohort. They're in conspiracy together. And there's Medea, and this is my roommate, and this guy stayed up there too. And this is a group from Spain, just another really great group from Spain. Okay, this was a Palestinian gal. She came and read us a poem, and she was selling real Palestinian the kekafiyah, kefiah, kefiah. Just a really sweet gal. These these were Russians. Here's two Russians, guys. We had you know just you know unbelievable, you know unbelievable to me that people forty different countries, you know, and forty-two, forty-two. Excuse me. Here's here's probably not. This is the our our training. You know, like Istanbul has got to be the center for the weddings in the world. I mean, we're talking, we're talking hundreds of buildings, 3-story buildings with wedding dresses and wedding dresses and wedding dresses. I say, what are they doing with weddings? But anyhow, this is where they have a wedding. And so Kelly and I, this is in our first training days.

Speaker 3: Oh, my God.

Barry Riesch: You know, Helyeh and I did do it. We had our first day of touring raining, and we managed to get lost. And we got really, really lost. But anyhow, so touring by these two, I was so glad to have her there, I'll tell you right now.

Speaker 3: Take a few last pictures.

Barry Riesch: Yeah, we don't have to go through them all. Just go a few more. I wanted to see the one with Ameed shaking my hand with, with the The Mandela grandson. Anyhow, but I have a— I didn't know it was being taken. I always was sitting in the front row, you know, I had to be ready for the action. And I got to shake his hand, and a guy behind me took the picture, you know, of me shaking his hand. So that's kind of— I like that. Okay, maybe we should just go into the video. All right.

Jeff Berger: It's up, starting at about minute 12.

Barry Riesch: Hopefully the audio works.

Speaker 3: We've had problems with the speakers. Well, we got subtitles. Yeah, but still, Lenny and I have been trying to carry this here. You need to pull it back. Yes, yes. Sorry about this. Yeah, audio though is a lot very powerful. Israel, to stop Israel violating international law, to get through in peace together and stop threatening us, stop cutting the supply, let the world know what we're really doing.

Barry Riesch: Yeah, so they just started, they just started the site post, post coming in. It was like 4 o'clock in the morning and they started that.

Speaker 3: One is behind the latte and there are 3 coming this way. They're just there, they're monkeying around with their sound.

Barry Riesch: They're trying to break the sound. They know that they're being approached.

Speaker 3: It'll become more obvious.

Barry Riesch: I just want to say that, you know, There's quite a bit of chaos on this, and our training was going to be completely much more organized than this boat was. They probably didn't do a whole lot of it. This is only like the second year into it. They started going in 2008. This was 2010.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: And they had a lot of people, a lot of people.

Speaker 3: We had like— what happens all the time in Boston, they build something and then they get Yeah.

Barry Riesch: Our trip was much more focused on being passive resistance. So the helicopters are now starting to hover up above, and this is where the real damage—

Speaker 3: they're already shooting, they're already shooting people on the upper level of the boat there. You mean from the water they're shooting?

Barry Riesch: No, there's a helicopter up above, and they, you know, you see the guy down below with a slingshot taking a shot at them. But they did, you know, they did manage to get some clubs and stuff like that. They tried to They actually had, you know, they're trying to save their boat. They had, you know, they had a responsibility to save their boat. You know, I mean, it'd be really hard to do this and not try to do something when you got people coming and shooting at you and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: Barry, were all the killings from helicopters?

Barry Riesch: They came from the top. Most of the gun wounds were to the top of their head. They were shot from the top. You know, they did, they eventually, you know, You can see here with the shooting on slingshot like that, going to do any good. But they did, you know, and then they did capture some of the Israeli soldiers, and they even, they were very kind to them and they released them, and then they turned around and animals soon after.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: You can see there, and they had, they actually had a manifesto. Maybe it'll show that they had people that they had been targeting. You see that we were considered to be terrorists, you know. IHH, the humanitarians, all terrorists. And the people that came to visit Turkey were the terrorists, State Department terrorists. And so they had a book of people that were supposedly terrorists who they were aiming for.

Speaker 3: Those injured people, were they dead? It says injured. Were they dead?

Jeff Berger: Yeah, there were—

Barry Riesch: ended up being 10 dead and 40 injured.

Speaker 3: Yeah. What boat are you talking about? The Mavi Marmara.

Barry Riesch: Mavi Marmara. And they did, you know, Anne Wright was on a boat adjoining this, and they did confront those other boats too. It felt like they didn't do anything. So anyway, I just wanted to give you an idea of what kind of came down there.

Speaker 3: Done? Is that it? No, she's on a different phone.

Barry Riesch: Yeah, I think that's probably enough.

Speaker 3: All right.

Barry Riesch: You know, if anybody wants to show it, I'll show it again. She'll see the whole thing. It's available on YouTube though, right? Yeah, available. Yeah, you got it. You can rent it. There's a trailer for Not Then. You can rent it for $4. Anyhow, so I just want to say a couple more things, and then Colleen can come and have her 45 minutes. Yeah. So 100, 150 people. But I just wanted to say that there was going to be another 300 Turks. 12,000 Turks applied to be on this ship. And I think like 4 million contributed to the aid. 4 million Turks. And, you know, Turkey has cut aid to Israel.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Barry Riesch: They cut trade, I should say, with Israel. So we had— but we wanted to have an international group, so we didn't want it just to be Turks. But if we'd have gotten on that boat, there'd have been at least 300 Turks along with our 150. So it would have been like 450, plus the media. And the way they did this thing, we were not even going to be able to be on the deck of the ship. They're going to come on. We're going to be down below in our affinity groups. And then, you know, probably passive resistance, you know, let them arrest us and do what they're— but that was the scenario that we were preparing for. So these guys was told, okay, once it started coming down, you know, I mean, you have a response, you want to protect, you know, I'd have been hiding behind a tin can over in the corner. But the, you know, people that are not, I learned a long time ago that I'm not tough, you know, and the best thing for me to do in lieu of getting beat up is to get down in a fetal position. And I learned that a long time ago. I mean, if you're tough, you think you can take them on, go ahead. But, you know, more power to you. But that's not for me. So, you know, okay.

Speaker 3: Helyeh? All right. Oh, yeah. After—

Coleen Rowley: I hope after listening to Barry, I can still recruit you to volunteer for the next flotilla. You know, if you saw the back of our shirts, this is all of the 15— yeah, good. There's 15 of these. And people say, well, you know, it didn't succeed. I said, well, you know what? They have a long history of trying. And the 2010 one, you know, was bad. Ismail's father was killed in this. And now, you know what? It has generated in Turkey Just this unbelievable, you know, compared to here, because we left before the college resistance had come up. And so one of the reasons I volunteered was, you know, trying to do all the signs and the banners on the footbridges and the vigils and all the things that we've done. It's just, you know, okay, this is an opportunity to do more. And yes, it's risky. But, you know, the main reason, of course, is what the sign at the vigil tonight that the lady— I don't even know her.

Speaker 3: I'm sorry.

Coleen Rowley: But she— her sign said, what if your kids were under the rubble? And I saw that and go, oh, that's what— I've got to make a new one. What if your kids were under the rubble? It's the main reason I volunteered. And I will say, I have 2 or 3 other reasons. One is I studied international law before I joined the FBI. And, you know, it's not just international law. It's actually now our domestic law. There's laws that forbid us from arming and aiding a genocide and from funding a country that has nuclear weapons. There's a lot. You would never know it. You don't ever hear about it on the news. But those are domestic laws. And of course, now we are going into a situation where it's now going to be illegal. It's already passed the House to criticize Israel.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Coleen Rowley: So we've lost with freedom of press, with WikiLeaks, now freedom of speech. I mean, literally everything is going into a state of chaos, a lawless state, even here. Like what we used to think of as other countries are like that, but here we have laws. So that was another reason. And then if the genocide could not be stopped, it's leading, it's on the very verge of starting a larger regional war.

Speaker 3: Right.

Coleen Rowley: Israel got so emboldened by the genocide, very easy to kill these people that are trapped, you know, that can't leave and they have a blockade, a siege for 17 years, and you can just bomb them periodically and now actually go into full genocide. That's real easy. So why don't we just go bomb the consulate in Syria as well? And when Iran did that, you know what? That's the trigger for a regional war. And as soon as Iran, if Iran had actually retaliated, now we could be looking at world war because Russia and China will come in on the side of Iran. And, you know, I don't know if people quite understand this, but world war means nuclear war. And there are actually plans in the Pentagon now to use tactical nukes. There's drills to use tactical nukes. If people are unwilling to risk You know, you know, the, the, the risk that we were taking to go on the, the next flotilla. But also, for instance, that State Department spoke— there's been 3 State Department people that have resigned, and the last one was a Foreign Service officer. If you haven't watched it on Democracy Now!, it's really good. That lady is completely articulate, and what she explains is that This actually now is not at all in the United States' interest. If people think we're merely killing people far away in Gaza, you know, it's a lot easier to tolerate that. But if you know that this blowback is now on us— anyways, watch Democracy Now! And what she said is, you know, there's a lot of other State Department people and other government insiders. We know there are staffers.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Coleen Rowley: Some of the people we call up from time to time, I know Bari even got somebody that said, yeah, I agree with you. One of the staffers even said, was it Klobuchar's staffer? Even said, good luck on getting humanitarian aid. Of course, there's a mixture. Maybe they're just saying things to appease you, but also some of them actually are against their own bosses.

Speaker 3: Right.

Coleen Rowley: Now, her name was Hala Rarit. What Hala said is they can't quit. They won't risk their jobs like I did.

Speaker 3: Sure.

Coleen Rowley: And so, the thing is, if you understand the consequences and what's at stake right now, we all have to step up and actually risk some more consequences, because it is really serious now. We are really looking far, far more— and this is not me talking. This is our veteran intelligence professionals. for Sanity. It's at least 3 or 4 groups I'm in. Stephen Starr and all that group that David Cooley sends out. These are the experts. And the experts right now are saying, we're looking at nuclear war if this cannot be turned around. Because it's not just Israel that's berserk and committing genocide, killing children, et cetera. They're up to their eyeballs now in this. But it's also the United States backing it.

Speaker 3: Yeah. That's right.

Coleen Rowley: I saw Aaron Maté right before I came today, and he used— I sent him that photo. It was the photo that said Genocide Joe, and there's an American flag on it. And he was on the group, and I sent it to him, and he said, where'd that come from, Colleen? And I go, well, I'm not sure, but I think it's somewhere in Washington, D.C. And somehow he found it and got the Anyway, Aaron Maté's article, and it's very correct. People who think that Biden's saying, I'm not going to give any more weapons. Well, of course he's saying that so that he thinks he has a chance in the election if he can tell people now that he's no longer sending bombs to Israel. Not true at all. Not true. He's already sent plenty.

Speaker 3: Right.

Coleen Rowley: out to have already done this damage. And so it's another one of these, oh, we'll drop parachutes with crates in, we'll build a pier.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Coleen Rowley: I mean, this is— these are the most ridiculous things in the world. And so it's fooling people, and it's up to us, I think. And of course, a lot of good writers and stuff that are in alternative news to try to tell people. So I'm going to give you the little video. I was real impressed with this guy. His name's Mohamed Dylan, and he did a short video. It's a good summary. He is an Iraqi. Okay, so here's an Iraqi, one of the victims. He was a little kid when it started. Can't hear him.

Speaker 3: Can you send that to me by email so I can look at it? Colin, can you just read what he's saying? We can't— back here. Yeah, let me start over.

Coleen Rowley: Okay. We left our lives—

Speaker 3: Let me start over.

Coleen Rowley: Okay. Before we start, he's an Iraqi. His background is he was actually helping do medical work behind the front lines in Iraq, bringing little kids to the back of it and help, you know, doing some medical help for kids. We have more than 5,500 tons of food and medicine. We left our life, our families, our work, and more than 1,000 people from more than 30 countries— it turns out to be 42 countries in the world. We are here preparing to sail to Gaza. That was one of the marches that we did. Also, I have Wassail Tassail Humanitarian Work. We do work inside Gaza District since October 7th. He's running— we're distributing food and medicine and non-potable water through Gaza, Rafah, and volunteering team in North Gaza. And more than 250,000 people beneficiaries from our work in Gaza last 6 months. But that's not enough. We need to provide more food and medicine. And I hope if I can meet our great team in Gaza, our message for people watching my video.

Jeff Berger: Thank you.

Coleen Rowley: To share our journey on social media, to help us to do more for Gaza, and we hope go on a safe journey and come back to our families. So 20-some, 20-some-year-old Iraqi who has already been working in Iraq, in— I think it was up in the north where we had the war on ISIS, where he was trying to do some medical work.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Coleen Rowley: He's running like a soup kitchen in Gaza with 35 people and feeding thousands of people. And he's 20-some years old. And he was one of the Flokela participants. So I just— he's one. I mean, there were some real impressive people that were part of this, and a lot of them were young.

Speaker 3: I have those pictures you sent me.

Coleen Rowley: Okay.

Speaker 3: So we can put a picture up.

Coleen Rowley: Oh, no.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Coleen Rowley: Well, I was lucky because after Okay.

Speaker 3: That's the wrong one. There we go. There we go.

Coleen Rowley: This is actually the new ship. So if you volunteer, you fill out this application that's on the International Freedom Flotilla page. You press apply and fill it out. And this boat is bigger than the Mavi Marmara, quite a bit bigger. It's at least 7 levels, and it's going to hold a lot more people. And we— and Barry had already left. He didn't get to see it, but we all got to have a little Yeah. And we did a tour on the boat. This is one of the hallways below. I think it's a thing down below. Okay, next one. That's like, you know, on a cruise ship when you first come in, you know. So it's actually an old cruise ship that's been kind of— it's old, but it's been, you know, it's ready to go. So this is at— we made these banners, of course, and lucky we did because we had all these vigils and marches and things. And our, our one said, Sail for Gaza. And there are a lot of the women, um, of the IHH, uh, which I can't, you know, I can't pronounce it either, the IHH, what it actually is in, in Turkish. But, um, this group was extremely impressive. I didn't know much about who was behind the flotilla. Um, and again, the Washington Post said Israel Labels them a terrorist entity. Well, they're like the Red Cross, you know. But of course, Israel labels UNRWA a terrorist entity.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Coleen Rowley: So, I mean, they're like— they've done 100 missions all over the world, earthquakes and everything else. But so whenever— this was all the women of the IHH had a vigil every day, and we would sit there, and all of them were so thankful that there were international people that were trying to To help. And they are all different backgrounds as well in the IHH. All right, this is a big square.

Barry Riesch: That was the last picture.

Speaker 3: That's the last one? Yeah.

Coleen Rowley: Okay, well, I didn't have as many photos.

Barry Riesch: We can show the 1-minute video on Free, Free Palestine.

Coleen Rowley: Oh yeah, that's on the front of the new show.

Barry Riesch: There's no audio, so it's only 10 seconds. You can sort of mouth the words here. Here we go.

Speaker 3: Audio's off. There's no audio.

Coleen Rowley: That's Ismail in the middle.

Speaker 3: Hold on. That's it.

Coleen Rowley: That's the front of the boat. There's actually even a place for a helicopter to land on the front of the boat. So this time they don't have to rappel down. They can actually land on the boat.

Jeff Berger: Great.

Speaker 3: She's a—

Coleen Rowley: she's military, actually. I think she's reserves. And actually, some of them have stayed there. They didn't come back. And some people are planning to come back, fly back even as far as New Zealand. They're going to fly back. There were 3 doctors that came all the way from New Zealand, Australians. And so a lot of us are planning to go back depending on what happens. But Trying to think. I think I, I think I can— I think that's it unless there's a question.

Speaker 3: Oh, I have a question.

Coleen Rowley: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Were there any Israelis?

Coleen Rowley: There were Jewish Voices for Peace.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Coleen Rowley: But I do not believe there were any Israelis in the group.

Speaker 3: I was just curious. Yeah.

Coleen Rowley: Good point. There were about 35 Americans. And I would say the biggest group was Malaysians, Indonesians.

Barry Riesch: Spain.

Coleen Rowley: Spanish were the big group. Some of the 35 were Jewish?

Speaker 3: Yes.

Coleen Rowley: Okay.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Barry Riesch: Medea Benjamin.

Speaker 3: Oh, of course.

Coleen Rowley: Yeah. And there were others too.

Speaker 3: Right. Yep.

Barry Riesch: I thought maybe we'd hold the questions till the end, get all our talks done, then come back and do questions because we have one more speaker.

Speaker 3: We were allowed. We have one more speaker. But yeah, let's—

Coleen Rowley: Yeah, we have one more speaker.

Speaker 3: Let Jeff get his. Okay.

Coleen Rowley: How about Jeff, the hunger striker?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Chris Mato Nunpa: Thank you.

Jeff Berger: Wow, it's great to be here tonight. I have to say, I want to be someplace where I can look at the screen and read stuff there and not be in the way of the cameras. Maybe off to this side.

Speaker 3: Let's try over here. Maybe this will work.

Barry Riesch: Okay.

Jeff Berger: And if you cut that light, that would be great. And you can roll it.

Speaker 3: Slide 1. Okay. That's a good idea. Let's see.

Jeff Berger: Then you need to hit your spacebar or something to get the video to play. I'm not sure we are— or click play.

Barry Riesch: Okay, there it goes.

Speaker 3: Tell us what's happening here.

Jeff Berger: Okay, this is just scenes from the White House. Typically, what— I've been to Washington a bunch of times for demonstrations. Usually I come in on a bus. I demonstrate, I get back on the bus, and I go back home. This time I was there for more than 2 weeks, and we were living in Northeast DC and going crosstown on the bus to the shrine, as I'm calling it. And I just wanted to capture some of the scene that's going on in front of the White House on a daily basis there.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Jeff Berger: It's a spectacle.

Speaker 3: Really?

Jeff Berger: It's amazing. There's a peace camp there. Thousands of people come from all over the world to visit this holy place. And there are demonstrations. This was a demonstration of people coming from Honduras who had been injured in La Bestia. And people are coming. There are some of us who are fasting. And there was a sign on the bus going across, Afro-American plight no different from Palestinians.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Jeff Berger: It's on the public bus, right? So, but in addition to all the stuff that I just showed you, there's all kinds of other things. Like there's somebody with a sound system there, and he plays every national anthem in the world, one after the other. Now here's the national anthem of Afghanistan. And then he plays Happy Birthday a couple of times an hour, because, you know, somebody's having a birthday and they're, you know. So it's just, um, this amazing spectacle.

Barry Riesch: Video's done.

Jeff Berger: Yes, we can move on. I know.

Speaker 3: Next slide.

Jeff Berger: Okay, so this whole thing was sparked by Aaron Bushnell, who immolated himself, of course, in front of the Israeli embassy.

Barry Riesch: His—

Jeff Berger: you've read this quote before— many of us like to ask ourselves, what would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South or apartheid. What would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is you're doing it right now.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Jeff Berger: So you could—

Speaker 3: Air Bushnell.

Jeff Berger: Yes. So that shook up a lot of people. And many of us heard him, his remarks, and were motivated, including another airman Larry Hebert, who took a leave from his duty station in Spain and started fasting in front of the White House. Many of us, and maybe you, saw his interview on Democracy Now! And when I saw it, I thought, wow! And then I thought, hey, wait, I'm a veteran, I can do that. So I figured out how to get to D.C. There were other people. Marshall Burns, he just jumped on Amtrak and showed up in time to catch Larry while he was still there. Najib Malik was a guy who lives in Washington, D.C. Josie Gourbeau was a former Army intelligence officer who resigned as a consequence of stuff she was seeing come across her desk as her job, and she rented a B&B for all of us to stay at. We were carrying on Wow. Activities around genocide. Al Bludkowski, I see we moved on. And then finally there was another guy at the end there. So I want to talk about a couple of things, why it was effective. You can take the next slide. And then basic lessons. Okay, so the White House is the setting of this fast. It is the national shrine. It's the center of the executive branch of the federal government. It has a historic role in our nation's story. All of— anybody who goes there, they're aware of the fact of the role it plays in our national culture. Active-duty soldiers and veterans are also iconic, valorized figures in this national story. And yet, here we are charging the president, the leader of our government, with supporting Genocide. And we're leveling this charge by fasting, a nonviolent action.

Speaker 3: Next.

Jeff Berger: Okay, so this setting, it sets up a tremendous dynamic, dramatic tension. So people come to this site expecting some kind of celebratory visit to a national shrine, I call it. But instead, they're confronted with this controversy. There's just this conflict going on within the national story. People react to it in different ways. So it's useful to consider where people sit on something called the spectrum of allies. You may have seen this before. Next slide, please. So here's the basic idea, and you can use this to understand where people sit on basically any question. So this is us down here. Here are the people closely associated with us. They like what we're doing. Maybe they're already doing it. There are passive allies, there are people in the middle, there's the passive opposition, and then there's the active opposition. So they all respond to us in different ways, and we could see that in terms of who was coming up and talking to us. Next slide, please. And so overwhelmingly, the basic response we got was thankfulness from people who were happy to see us there.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Jeff Berger: This was a very emotional moment for many because they were feeling isolated and they didn't know what to do. And to see us there and to see us carrying on this fast was something that they had been looking for and longing for. So that was good.

Barry Riesch: We'll get back to that in a minute.

Jeff Berger: The people at the other end of that spectrum, the people who were actively opposed to us, this diagram doesn't show much movement out of that stage, out of that people who hold those views. But in fact, I think there was something going on because we had several people from Israel who were there. There was one, a young woman, and she tried very simply to explain why we were wrong. And when we didn't immediately agree with her, she was reduced just to shouting insults at us. I mean, it totally destroyed She didn't know how to respond to us. She could not. She didn't have a framework for understanding what we were doing. There was another guy also from Israel.

Barry Riesch: He's—

Jeff Berger: when we brought up the deaths of civilians and children, he said, oh, there are no children dying in Gaza. Come to Israel. I can prove to you.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Jeff Berger: So whatever. I think we presented them with something which fractured their certainty. And it's a possible sign that something more positive can happen. So next slide, please. So I guess the first thing is, these are the conclusions I draw. There's a broad sense of outrage at the genocide being committed by the US and Israel in Palestine. The managers of US empire have lost control of the narrative.

Barry Riesch: Yeah.

Jeff Berger: And we can see that from the Uprisings in the colleges all over. And of course, this is a global awakening. It's not just here in the United States, it's all over the world. This is why I think focusing on Gaza and Palestine is key to our work in building this movement at this time. It splits— I think it gives us tremendous leverage to do things that we have never been able to do before. We just have to get on the ball and make the most of this that we can. So the spontaneous movement, the things that are happening on the campus, they are ahead of us organizers. They're moving faster. And that was shown by the DC Fast, for instance. Next slide, please. Oh, I'm sorry. I wanted to check in with this. This was a— this floated across my Facebook feed, I think. Caitlin Johnston. I don't know if you see her, know her or not. Yeah, okay, absolutely. But she's talking about these 2 guys, managers of the empire. They're freaked out. They've lost control, and they're really worried about that. So—

Speaker 3: Who's the number one?

Jeff Berger: He's the CEO of Palantir, which is this big artificial intelligence defense Mr.

Speaker 3: Bail Company, Peter Thiel, Palantir. Yeah. They're basically part of the Israeli and the US military-industrial complex.

Jeff Berger: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: Exactly, exactly.

Jeff Berger: Okay, next slide. Okay, so the DC FAST itself was an example of this spontaneous surge. You know, we just all showed up because we saw an opportunity. We wanted to do something. It wasn't like there was some strategy meeting somewhere or another, you know, within Veterans for Peace that planned this, this fast. So people just showed up. Fortunately, Veterans for Peace stepped into the breach, even though there's not really an active chapter in D.C. So they provided us with a place to stay. There was a lot of stuff that we really needed to have. And as fasters, you really can't do much but get back and forth and talk to people while you're there. That's enough. You need other people supporting you to do things. Okay, so I've already said there, there is this mass hunger for effective action. I think the next slide talks about— okay, so visitors come from everywhere around the world. We need to be able to connect those people with groups in their own hometown. We need to be able to give them lists of resources that they can read.

Chris Mato Nunpa: Yeah.

Jeff Berger: We need people doing publicity in DC to outreach to the press to build the fast. We need to have people reaching out to potential fasters if we're talking about a long, long fast. This was just 5 of us, more or less. We kind of came in, overlapped. Some of us were only able to fast for a few days and then had medical problems. We didn't have any medical support. That was a problem also for some of the people who came later. So there's all kinds of stuff that needs to be done. We need a local committee in D.C. to support this effort because I think it's going to come back. You know, I think there's a potential for building there. And I see a hand up.

Speaker 3: Have you talked to Code Pink?

Jeff Berger: I have not spoken to them, but yes.

Barry Riesch: Hold the question until we're done.

Jeff Berger: Yeah, I don't know. That's a great idea. You know, I voiced these ideas when I was in D.C. because there's really not a local, active local chapter there now. There was one previously. It hasn't been picked up so far. So I, you know, it's irrelevant here, but I'll keep pushing that. Okay, next slide, I think. Oh, okay. Ah, okay. These are some more suggestions here.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Jeff Berger: So this national— it's a great site for building the movement nationally. And I think Veterans for Peace needs to focus some effort on that. I know it's a national leadership and a bunch of local chapters, so it's not— I don't know how we pull together the resources to do that, but I'm giving that question out to you so you can solve that later. It would be great if Veterans for Peace connected with the Princeton hunger strikers, because they're saying they're going to hunger strike until they get their demands met. We could connect with them, you know, to support them publicly. I think that would help them get their demands met. Okay. And here locally, I think we need to see how the folks on the panel and others of us can connect with the students here. I don't know what's going on with that. And I'm interested in doing Work around Palestine.

Chris Mato Nunpa: Next slide.

Speaker 3: Last one.

Jeff Berger: Okay, so free, free Palestine!

Speaker 3: Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine!

Barry Riesch: Free, free Palestine!

Speaker 3: Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

Barry Riesch: I just wanted a couple of things. We still got a few minutes. I wanted to thank Colleen. You know, she, she's the great sign maker. She also did all the sign making, or the bulk of the sign making for us while we were in Istanbul.

Speaker 3: Anybody from the 2nd Congressional District?

Coleen Rowley: But if you know of anyone, tomorrow at about 12:15, we're going to set up the signs outside the, um, Where Angie Craig is going to be nominated.

Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.

Coleen Rowley: Angie Craig, who voted to censor Rashida Tlaib and voted basically for funding the genocide. And so we've got a lot of signs and only a couple of people in the CD2. So if you don't have anything to do, come see me and I'll give you the address. It's at a middle school in Eagan. So if you don't have anything to do, like 12:15 or so tomorrow, And again, it's an opportunity because a lot of these people don't know.

Speaker 3: They think of her, she's our, you know, like Amy Klobuchar, they think of her as the goody two-shoes, and here she's voting for these things. So, okay.

Barry Riesch: Just, I want to say too, just people want to know what happened to the boat and to the aides. Just so you know that the humanitarian, they went through hell. A rich Egypt port. Supplies will be offloaded and go to the line of trucks with other cargo waiting to go into Gaza. The ship will return to Turkey and be refilled with the same type of cargo in time to participate in the flow. And they've been doing this for the last 7 months. IHH has been sending aid. So you don't have to worry about the aid, but it's in line in the port.