The Inspiration Behind the Palestine Petition

Like many other people in here, as I was watching the situation in Gaza steadily worsen, so did my anger. One day I was nose-deep in a Che Guevara book with my TV on CNN in the background when breaking news of live footage of Israeli bombs targeting civilians came in. After a few minutes of cursing the United Nations, I$rael and the United $tates, I calmed down feeling somewhat demoralized at the fact that there was nothing I could do. Defeated, I sat back down and tried to temporarily put out of my head what I had just seen.

I dove back into the Che book when I immediately got my orders from “the commandante” himself, or his ex-wife rather. There is a chapter in the book about Che’s time in Guatemala during his formative years and his work with the Arbenz government when the U.$.-backed coup took place and the country was in chaos. Revolutionaries and other activists were in the process of fleeing the country and hiding in various Latin American embassies. Che and his soon-to-be wife were among the last to seek shelter from the political repression, instead opting to continue their work in semi-underground fashion. Che’s partner Hilda Gadea was in a somewhat tight bind at the time where her actions and movements were both limited and scrutinized by the new government. She was not able to do everything she wanted to do but she was at least able to start a petition denouncing the coup. Upon reading this I had something of a eureka moment and knew what I had to do, or what I could do.