March to Gaza: Journalist Seeking Support

My name is Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, an activist, educator, and journalist originally from Utica, New York. I am joining 1,000s of people from all over the world in Egypt this June for the March to Gaza - where we will march across the desert for a few days and arrive at the border crossing at Gaza and demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the allowance of aid into Gaza, an end to the war and genocide, and an end to the Israeli occupation of and apartheid over Palestine. We all know that the situation is dire, that civilians, children, and babies are dying daily, and that we all need to do our part to put an end to this. I am asking for you to support me in getting there so I can join this action. I also plan to report on this march for my work as an independent, investigative journalist.

For years I have been an activist and organizer in a number of struggles and movements: the antiwar movement, immigrant justice, prisoner justice, the labor movement, the anarchist movement, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the Palestinian freedom movement. I have been in the fight for a free Palestine for years - most of my work has been in the US, and it continues in Cambodia where I currently live and helped form the Cambodia Palestine Solidarity group. I also went to occupied Palestine twice over the last two years and I am working on a series of articles about the movement against the occupation and apartheid in the West Bank. I saw life under occupation first hand, and the beautiful resilience Palestinians have in the face of it all. I witnessed first hand the violence of settlers in small villages and in Hebron, an IDF raid of a refugee camp in Bethlehem, and had a close call when a soldier threatened to shoot me and two Palestinian journalists. You can read some of my articles in Unicorn Riot about life and death in Bethlehem’s Dheisheh refugee camp.

I don’t normally ask for financial assistance for anything like this, but I could use the support. I currently work as a contingent professor in Cambodia where, as you may imagine, the pay is low, and where I don’t have any benefits or job security. My future work there is a bit up in the air at the moment. I also work very part time as a freelance journalist. It is very unlikely I will get funding to travel to Egypt to report on this. But I still plan to be on the ground and cover this. Your donations will mostly cover the cost of the airplane tickets ($630 USD). The rest of the funds will cover other transportation, food, lodging, and necessities I will need for my trek across the desert.

I am not sure if we will be successful in getting various governments to pressure Israel and the US in particular to end this madness. Maybe it will spark others in the region and around the world to join the struggle to end this genocide. Maybe we can build enough pressure to allow more aid into Gaza. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t. There are so many unknowns at this moment - the future is very much up for grabs. But as the Israeli army continues to liquidate the ghetto of Gaza, as more and more children are killed and starve to death on a daily basis, as this brutal Israeli machine of death and destruction continues to bomb this concentration camp into oblivion, I felt obligated to be there. Every person on the ground there will count. And collectively, anything is possible.

If you can donate anything large or small - even $5 or $10 - I will be eternally grateful. And whether or not you donate, do what you can to join the international movement to put an end to this genocide, and to the occupation. We have no other choice. Let’s continue to do our collective part to free Palestine!

Love and solidarity to all of you!