This year, the annual deluge of Black Friday ads egging us on to attain higher levels of consumption–with corresponding carbon emissions and solid and liquid waste–seemed particularly hollow, morbid–predatory, even– falling as Black Friday did this year on November 29, the date the U.N. first recognized in 1977 as International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Desiree Hellegers talks about the confluence of these two occasions, and about the settler colonial simulacra of Thanksgiving, and the urgency of calls for Joe Biden to free 80-year-old Dakota, Lakota, Anishinaabe political prisoner Leonard Peltier.
You can find a fuller, text version of this piece, with links, at Counterpunch.
Resources:
Amnesty International Campaign: President Biden Should Free Leonard Peltier
and
Amnesty International Action Toolkit to Free Leonard Peltier
Left side image credit: "[United States - T-Shirt] Free The People's Land; Free Peltier" by Penn State Special Collections Library is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Ken Lawrence collection, 1940-2010, HCLA 6312, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University. Image description: red text on black background: Free the People's Land / Anishinabe Akeeng / Free Peltier. Text surrounds a drawing of Peltier and an eagle both facing left, above a globe surrounded by eagle feathers. Right side image credit: "Free Palestine, from the river to the sea" by Diane_Krauthamer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Image description: black and white poster print saying "Free Palestine" above an image of someone stanign by an olive tree, holding a Palestinian flag, above crashing waves. Text below: From the river to the sea.
- KBOO