PHOTO ESSAY | Hundreds March From SeaTac to Ballard, the Length of Gaza, for Palestinian Liberation

by Alex Garland

Seattle is familiar with protests, from the Seattle General Strike in 1919 to the WTO Protests in 1999 to the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest in 2020. Even before Israel's continued bombing of Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, Seattle has seen many protests, demonstrations, rallies, and artful activism for Palestinian liberation. While critics may call these events without direct action pointless, as immediate change is often hard to see, activists and organizers have doubled down on their efforts to bring attention to the loss of Palestinian life, land, and culture.

On Sunday, May 26, more than 800 supporters of Palestine had registered to walk from SeaTac to Golden Gardens in North Seattle, a distance of 25 miles, the length of Gaza. The march, according to the organizers' press release, called "for an immediate ceasefire and lasting freedom and safety for all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea." Recent news of an Israeli assault on Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, including a bombing of a tent camp, infused some protestors with a sense of grief. The march route, passing by and over the Duwamish River and ending at the Salish Sea, allowed time for activists to process their grief around the issue, offered a welcoming space for anyone new to the struggle for Palestinian liberation, and provided an opportunity for connection with a community committed to justice.

Nicole Loeffler, an organizer of the event, said she considered this march a vigil, allowing people who hadn't had access to protest or hadn't attended one before a low-risk way to join. "I try to think of it as a tool among many tools," she said. "This is more of a base-building effort and more of a community-building effort, and also an insistence that we keep our attention on what's happening in Palestine." She continued, "It's like a physical response to the demand to keep our eyes on Palestine. When social media says 'All eyes on Palestine,' how can we bring that into the real world? We can do that through our bodies in space."

While group solidarity was strong — there were chants of "We keep us safe;" a brigade of cars, motorcycles, and bikes providing protection to marchers crossing busy roads; and medics and "care bears" dispensing food, water, and hand warmers — the protest brought together a range of people. A multi-faith coalition participated, including Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist marchers along with members of Falastiniyat, Baladna, The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, Seattle Education Association, No Tech For Apartheid, Veterans For Peace, Duwamish Solidarity Group, Jewish Voice for Peace Seattle, Nipponzan Myhji Japanese Buddhist Order, Mennonite Action, Kadima Reconstructionist Community, Washington Students United for Palestine, and more.

Some saw a connection between settler colonialism in Palestine and that of Indigenous rights in the Pacific Northwest. ​​The march was called "From the Duwamish River to the Salish Sea," which references the phrase "from the river to the sea." To some, the phrase is contentious, and it's interpreted as an antisemitic threat focused on the potential eradication of Israel. But not everyone holds this view. Along the route by the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center, when some marchers were asked what the phrase meant, they interpreted it as a call for Palestinian liberation, one focused on freedom for oppressed people.

'From the River to the Sea': What Does It Mean to Me?

"When you look at ancient history and recent history, 'between the river and the sea' has been a melting pot for many different cultures," Jake Harris said. "And it's a sick, twisted idea to say that only one [group of] people can live there and everybody else has to leave. And so 'from the river to the sea' means to me that there should be the Indigenous folks of that land, whether they be Christian or Jewish or practice Muslim faith, or they're Druze or Bedouin, that they have a right to exist and return to that land."

Khalid Elassaad said, "When we say 'from the river to the sea,' we're talking about freedom from the river to the sea, so that every person from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea has their human rights honored and respected and can live a life of freedom and dignity."

"It should be freedom for all humanity, not just one side," Quasim said. "We believe that everyone should be treated with dignity, with respect, with respect for their property."

"It means land, and it means water, and it means the land and the water on its own terms," Jackie An said. "The way nature intended it to be and honoring and respecting that. The people of the land and the water, who will tend to it and be the best caregivers of that land. We've seen so much violence, in terms of genocide but also the ecocide, and the ecological impacts of all the armaments, which are terribly toxic and increasing CO2 emissions. These things are interrelated, and we need to start getting our shit together and start taking care of the Earth like it's alive."

Nancy Franco was on her way home from church with her daughter when they stopped to join the protest, and Franco said the expression "means from people from the ocean, to the rivers to the sea, everyone in between there, every single person should be free and have the right to freedom and liberation and to have free movement."

"Well, for starters," Martha Baskin said, "it's the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in the context now. And what that means to me is a land that has long had many, many peoples living there, and only until the State of Israel was born was it more and more constricted … so that it's become kind of a closed landscape. And that should not be the case. It should be a land that is shared by all. How that will happen I do not know, but to me, it does not mean that Israelis have to exit, it means that they have to probably give up a good portion of territory to accommodate the peoples who have been there for hundreds of years."

"'From the river to the sea' means everybody should be free, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, everyone, no matter who you are," Jehn Greenstein said. "Freedom looks like equality. Freedom looks like the end to occupation and to genocide. Freedom means that people can be themselves and seek the kind of lives that they want to seek, they can be healthy and have family and community and live without fear. It means being free from the thought that in order to survive that one group's survival depends on the annihilation of another group."

"'From the river to the sea' means a Palestinian line before 1948, which is from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea," Amjad said. "That was Palestine, it belongs to Palestine, it is Palestine."

"Freedom and justice for 'Indigenous people from the river to the sea,'" Fatuma said. "It means justice for the people who are of that land, from that land."

With white kites, Palestinian flags, signs, and banners, marchers made their presence known throughout Seattle. From SeaTac to the Folklife Festival at Seattle Center, activists marched together, and although delays meant the group, which swelled to nearly 500 people, couldn't all make it to the sea at Golden Gardens, nearly 80 did.

Loeffler feels good about how the day turned out and said she is incredibly grateful to everyone who made the day possible. "I specifically heard from someone who said that she was grateful for the opportunity to join an event like this for the first time. And that was really meaningful for me, and I'm looking forward to sharing that with all the other organizers, because I think that that was just a big part of our vision, creating space for more people to see themselves in this movement."

📸 Featured Image: Hundreds of supporters of Palestine walked from SeaTac to Golden Gardens in North Seattle, a distance of 25 miles, the length of Gaza, to call "for an immediate ceasefire and lasting freedom and safety for all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea" on May 26, 2024. (Photo: Alex Garland)