On 16 October last year, just over a week after Israel launched an openly declared genocidal assault on Gaza following the 7 October Hamas attack, Cori Bush, a Black congresswoman from St. Louis, introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives calling for an immediate ceasefire.
A veteran of the Ferguson uprising against the police murder of Michael Brown and a longtime Palestine solidarity activist, Bush’s resolution was notable for a number of reasons. For one, it quickly gathered 17 co-sponsors in a congressional chamber previously known for slavishly genuflecting to the Israel lobby. For another, all the sponsors or co-sponsors were people of color. Not a single white representative in Congress signed on.
Among the 18 were the four original members of what has come to be known as the Squad, consisting of representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib. A squad in army parlance can consist of four to 10 soldiers, and a platoon consists of four squads. What became apparent on 16 October was that the Squad – at least on this issue – had become a platoon, consisting of people who had the lived experience of facing systemic racism and white supremacy. …more
