I arrived at the lightly-attended Maine Mobilization for Palestine ‘Arrest Netanyahu!’ protest in front of the Blaine House in Augusta yesterday (Wednesday, July 24, 2024) shortly after the announced 11am start time.
In the steady rain, just eight hearty souls showed for the Maine Coalition for Palestine-branded event (flyer attached). Several of the uniformly lily-white locals wore trash bags in vain attempts to stay dry. The two organizers, Matthew Crane of Waterville and “Mary” (no last name given) from Whitefield, wore middle-eastern arabic scarves (keffiyehs) as an exercise of virtue signaling. No masks were worn at the outdoor event held on the sidewalk on the far end of Capitol Street.
After asking if I was at the event “in solidarity,” Mary informed me that they no longer anticipated having enough people to encircle the State House as was originally planned and as was announced earlier on social media. Later, Crane (who looks like the love child of Jack Black and Grizzly Adams) told me the very small gathering was actually the “Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights,” but said was unsure if it was a splinter group from Maine Coalition for Palestine since he was new to the scene.
The organizational names had a very Monty Python “People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front” skit vibe. While I knew they were serious about the whole thing, one could be forgiven for repeatedly thinking “Are you serious?” throughout my brief interviews with the leaders.
Shortly thereafter, Crane, who had brought his mobile bullhorn, launched into an off-the-cuff, meandering, one-minute speech about things being bad in Palestine, without ever actually using the word “Gaza,” though. He bemoaned the “39,000 innocent dead” there, without providing any more context than that the “vast majority” were children. I was skeptical, but the others, by this time waterlogged, were silent in their soggy misery. Crane dutifully called for Netanyahu to be arrested (thus tying into the supposed theme of the protest, per the meager advance social media publicity) but provided no more clarity or rationale for the requested action than the subject (Netanyahu) and verb (arrest) combination.
Immediately after his amplified rant, Crane segued disjointedly into call-and-response chants, which seemed expected, but also was not enthusiastically embraced by most attendees. They were silent, save for one of the group (the largest of the motley crew) who screamed his chant replies at the very top of his lungs. This provided enough incentive for Crane to continue for several minutes.
In the chants, several local and national federal-level politicians were charged with horrific mass killing, including Jared Golden, Susan Collins, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Each were mocked that they “could not hide,” immediately before the two antisemetic protestors manically charged them “with genocide.” None of the officials verbally-indicted American citizen elected officeholders were identified by their elective position titles.
Among the other chants: the uber-local “From Wabanaki to Palestine, occupation is a crime” and the old-timey “Not another nickel, not another dime; No more more money for Israel’s crimes.” The climatic finale of the chants was to damn the entire “United States Government” as being “complicit in genocide.” If one is very charitable, they might be able to forgive the group for not fully grasping in their zeal the implication of accusing over 2 million Americans of such a high crime.
When I left at noon, the small group had again consolidated in front of the Blaine House, where Maine’s governor and agricultural commissioner were holding a Maine Wild Blueberry ceremony of some sort. Mills would later that afternoon issue a press release on the blueberry issue, but not acknowledge the somewhat vocal protestors’ request to “Arrest Netanyahu!” One suspects she may have been oblivious to the protest and demand, and may be so even now.
The already-bedraggled group insisted on standing in the rain for another hour after I left, however. The seemingly-arbitrary 1pm end-time for the event did allow for devout muslims in the group to participate in the ‘noon prayer’ of Zuhr, also transliterated Dhuhr, Duhr, Thuhr or Luhar, which is one of the five daily mandatory islamic prayers. In Maine, that would be observed at 1:11pm local time. This, despite no devout muslims being noticed in this group.
Mike
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