On Sunday, September 28th, dozens of Mainers set out to Fort Gorges by kayak and canoe, leaving from Portland’s East End. Organized by the Maine Coalition for Palestine, this local flotilla was in solidarity with a larger flotilla of international activists setting out from Greece in efforts to deliver food to Gaza and protest Israel’s blockade.

Erin Kiley of the Maine Coalition for Palestine explains the motives of this protest to Fox23: “It may not have been immediately obvious to everybody that what was happening in Palestine was wrong. It’s wrong on a moral level, it’s wrong on a political level. It’s also wrong on the level that we can’t bomb our way to peace. We can’t always proceed with violence.” (Kiley)

 From 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, kayakers and canoeists filled the bay in a silent protest of the ethnic cleansing and current starvation of Palestine. A large banner reading, “Stop arming genocide,” was hung by protestors over the top of Fort Gorges, representing local activists’ support of the people of Gaza, and solidarity to the International Freedom flotilla.  Though a small-scale, local protest may seem insignificant to some, these Mainers believe that examples like this can encourage others to use their voices and eventually lead to significant change. “I think if each of us just does one little thing that we can do that does make a difference. We never know how our actions impact change, but they do impact change,” Hannah Thanhauser, a local activist, says in an interview with  News Center Maine. 

In a world where it can be easy to neglect what does not directly affect us, the importance of using our own voices remains paramount. Promoting change through local protests is a useful tool to bring together individual voices and foster a sense of unity.