Mainstream News Fails To Cover March for Gaza in DC

I attended March for Gaza on January 13, 2024 with six of my kids, along with thousands of other people. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when there was almost no news coverage of the event.

Even when I searched for coverage, anemic articles a couple of paragraphs long described the protest. Longer articles mentioned the DC event, but focused more on other protests that happened around the world the same day, particularly in Paris and London. Several articles implied that the DC protest was characterized by violence.

I was at the DC protest.

I will bear witness if the media won’t.

We arrived at 8:45 a.m. Soon after we left our van in the parking garage at the AARP building, we started seeing people wearing keffiyeh everywhere. My kids had been unsure about joining me in wearing my keffiyeh. They planned to put them on when we headed to the protest later in the day. Instead, they were asking to put theirs on within blocks of the parking garage, inspired by those around them.

There was a large police presence, with a police helicopter flying overhead, and police in flak jackets standing with huge guns around the area where the roads were being closed off for the protest, all in place from the time we arrived in the morning.

Since we were there so early, I took my kids to see some of the landmarks and monuments in DC. At every landmark we visited, there were people in keffiyeh, people wearing sweatshirts, hats, and other clothing either printed with the pattern of keffiyeh, or other words and slogans in support of Palestine.

My older girls stayed outside while I took the younger kids into the National Museum of American History. When we met up afterward, they enthusiastically showed us how a fellow protester had shown them how to wrap their keffiyeh to cover their faces. As the time for the protest grew near, the number of people in the streets climbed. Palestinians flags were flying everywhere.

We headed back to the car to get our signs and walked back toward Freedom Plaza for the protest. It was easy to find the event even though we didn’t know our way around DC. People were streaming toward the Plaza, flags flying, signs under their arms or in the air.

People with megaphones were spaced throughout the crowd to lead chants. A watermelon kite flew alongside signs calling for a ceasefire, an end to the genocide, and a free Palestine. South African flags flew to support that country as they charge Israel with genocide in the International Court of Justice.

From the stage, Palestinians gave personal accounts of family members who had been killed by Israeli air strikes, including one instance where an Israeli bomb killed several family members. When a surviving family member rushed in to dig through the rubble for his family with his bare hands, Israel bombed the same place again and killed him as well. Another woman testified that over 100 family members had been killed in Gaza.I recognized some of the voices I heard but couldn’t confirm for sure who was speaking when. “Among those addressing the crowd in Washington, by video link, was Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh, whose wife, daughter, two sons and a grandchild were killed by Israeli airstrikes. Also speaking were . . . [third party] US presidential candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein, as well as a daughter of Malcom X, Ilyasah Shabazz.” In between speakers, we roared our message to the White House, to Israel, to the representatives ignoring us.

The protesters also voiced support of Yemen, who stands in solidarity with Palestine. The mainstream media coverage of what is happening in the Red Sea is single note, but according to Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni American assistant professor at Michigan State University, a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, “[The Houthis] are doing this in support of Palestine, in support of the people of Gaza. And they have repeatedly said that all of these attacks toward these ships that are either Israeli or going towards Israel will stop once the Israelis stop their war on Gaza, and specifically, actually, preventing the food and medicine from entering Gaza — so, essentially using a naval blockade in the Red Sea to prevent the blockade against civilians in Gaza. . . .they announced that this was also in accordance with their obligations under genocide prevention, Article I of genocide prevention, which says that states should have an obligation to prevent genocide. “The most powerful part of the protest was when a man sang a prayer in Arabic, his voice carrying over the thousands of people as we stood together in silence.

Here are the demands of the March for Gaza:

1. An Immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

2. Stop the unconditional US funding of Israel’s genocide against Gaza and the occupation of Palestine.

3. Hold Israel accountable for war crimes committed against the Palestinian people and their continuous violations of international law.

Organizers believe there were 400,000 people at the protest. We were there for three hours. It remained peaceful, and despite being packed like sardines, we never felt unsafe in the crowds. Few news articles included aerial shots of the protest, which were some of the most compelling:I don’t know if anything will come of the protest, but I know I needed to be there. I will keep telling the truth even if no one is listening.