Anabaptist World hosted a livestream panel discussion with Mennonite Action on August 20. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is on Anabaptist World’s YouTube channel.

AW: Welcome, everyone. We are excited for tonight’s livestream. My name is Juan Moya, digital strategist of Anabaptist World, and we have very special guests tonight. We have some members of Mennonite Action. Welcome, Anna, Michael, Sarah and Nick. If you can introduce yourselves and share a little bit of your background with Mennonite Action and what roles you have.

Anna Johnson: It’s great to be here with everyone. My name is Anna Johnson, and I currently live on the land of the Pokagan Potawatomi in South Bend, Indiana, where I’m a PhD student at Notre Dame, studying peace studies and sociology. I grew up in Iowa City. Before I moved to South Bend, I lived and worked in Palestine for a number of years, including with Mennonite Central Committee. Currently I am on the steering committee of Mennonite Action and very involved in our Michiana chapter here in the region, so it’s great to be a part of the conversation.

Michael George: My name is Michael George, and I’m from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I am a high school teacher at Lancaster Mennonite and formerly taught at Dock Mennonite Academy and Philadelphia Mennonite High School. I’m a Palestinian American Mennonite. My father was born in Palestine in1942 and became a refugee at six years old in 1948. I’m on the steering committee of Mennonite Action, and I’ve also been involved with MennoPIN (Mennonite Palestine Israel Network) for five or six years and have helped to facilitate what we call the twinning with Gaza initiative where we have [had] partners in Gaza for the last four years and have gotten to know them really well through Zoom meetings. It’s just been a blessing to get to know them and a tragedy to see what’s happening to them right now.

Sarah Nahar: Thanks, y’all. Hi, I’m Sarah Nahar calling in today from the Haudenosaunee space on Onondaga Nation land. Prior to having an opportunity to be on the steering committee of Mennonite Action, my work has been with Community Peacemaker teams, which is committed to building partnerships that transform violence and oppression. CPT has been in Hebron-Al Khalil since 1994-1995, and so supporting that team, as well as doing this work around the world, has shown me that Palestine is a global struggle.

Nick Martin: Hey y’all. My name is Nick Martin. I live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Susquehannock land. I grew up here in Lancaster, attending Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster, and it’s actually in my church when I was a high schooler that I first started organizing for peace and Justice against the war in Iraq in 2005-2006. My friends and I started tabling at our high schools, doing alternative to military recruitment education, and that experience really changed the way that I look at the world and inspired me to be a social movement organizer, which is what I’ve done for my whole life.

In October after Hamas’ brutal attacks and Israel’s genocidal response, I started talking to a friend of mine, Adam Ramer, and we started attending demonstrations led mostly by Jewish organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now and Rabbis for a Ceasefire. We were attending these demonstrations and were really inspired by the leadership of those organizations. We said to ourselves, What if we asked Mennonites to take public action and use our cultural and spiritual traditions in the way that we see these Jewish organizations doing? Would Mennonites be interested in responding to a call for an organization like that? We started asking that question of some folks that we know, including the folks on this call. Adam and I both ended up quitting our jobs and joining Mennonite Action full-time as the co-directors and staff starting in January.

AW:  Can you tell us a little bit about Gaza and Palestine right now? What’s happening on the ground? What are your experiences?

MG:  So what I’m hearing, what I’m seeing, from our partner organizations in Gaza is just a complete and utter devastation. I don’t think we can quite comprehend the level of devastation that that they’re experiencing. My friend Tareq, who was the facilitator in Gaza for our twinning with Gaza program, is now studying in the United States at a Mennonite university, and during the past nine months, he’s lost three sisters.  His family has had to move frequently throughout Gaza. Gaza YMCA’s building was destroyed, but their organization is still alive. Many people from the Gaza YMCA are both Christians and Muslims. Christians and Muslims are now sheltering together in two churches in in Gaza City. In fact, right now the board president of the Gaza YMCA is sheltering in the Holy Family Catholic Church, and he has been for months.

AJ: I would just add to that I’m also in touch with several friends whom I got to know when I was working with MCC. One has been featured in an Anabaptist Witness. I asked him a few days ago how he was, and his response is often, Fine, how are you, even though they’ve been displaced so many times, but this weekend he said, So sad. The red zone is very close; the bombing is very close. Some shrapnel reached us, and the sounds are terrifying, and the children are screaming.

AW: Thanks for sharing that. Talking about Gaza and Palestine, do you partner with other organizations? How does that happen?

NM: Yes, we partner with other organizations. We just finished work on an interfaith action in DC with a group called Interfaith action for Palestine. We partnered with other organizations including Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Rabbis for Ceasefire, Hindus for Human Rights, Christians for a Free Palestine, Faith for Black Lives, Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity. Some of these other faith-based groups that are also calling for a ceasefire had the opportunity to mobilize together in Washington DC.

AW: Would you say that the big part of your year has involved Gaza and Palestine, or do you have other projects simultaneously?

SN: We formed out of an urgency to call for and pressure our governments for a ceasefire, and I would say that that absolutely remains our primary purpose. I would say that one of the unique aspects that Mennonite Action is bringing and inviting people. Anna mentioned Mennonite Central Committee. I mentioned Christian [now Community] Peacemaker Teams. There are other organizations. Michael mentioned MennoPIN.  Our church, MC USA, in 2017 passed a resolution seeking peace in Israel-Palestine. So there are a number of groups that are affiliated with Mennonites and Anabaptist working in this arena, and it is wonderful to collaborate with them. I came in as an activist, but Michael, I know that your story is a little bit different, and you could also speak to how Mennonite Action has been ministering to those who don’t see themselves as activists at first.

MG: I’m a social studies teacher. I’m a historian. I’ve always cared deeply about peace and justice. But I never really thought of myself as an activist, and I don’t know if I think of myself as an activist right now. However, Mennonite Action has helped facilitate opportunities for me to speak out on behalf of my friends in Gaza, to speak out on behalf of my family, but also to speak out as an Anabaptist Christian just for peace.

AW: There are different methods to do protests. One of the things that you guys do is singing as [a] form of public protest. Why is that?

NM: I love this question. Being Mennonite is what inspired me to be like what Michael was just talking about. [It] was the foundation of my beliefs in peace and justice and following in the footsteps [and] the example of Jesus. And so the prayers that we bring into our actions, the songs that we sing, for me are inseparable from action, and when we sing hymns while we’re taking action, it brings me back to what I believe. It also helps me see those hymns that I grew up with in a totally different light and brings meaning to them in a way that I never could have imagined before doing it. I guess I’d also say that I think it’s important that we bring our full selves into the actions that we take. For me, that’s often singing hymns or praying; for other folks that might quilts.

AJ: I totally agree with the bringing your whole self. I think the other thing it happens to do is really unsettle what we think is a protest. When we had our first gathering, [an] unannounced hymn sing outside Representative Yakym’s office here in Mishawaka, there were several TV crews that came out. They almost didn’t even know how to ask the questions because they were just like, this is so different than [other] protests we’ve covered.

MG: Just the importance of singing: I was one of the 135 people arrested in the Capitol building in January. I was very nervous walking around the Capitol building, but then as we started singing, and even [when] we all were arrested and we had hand zip ties on, we kept singing. It felt in a weird way like Mennonite school choir, that we were not going to stop singing. We didn’t stop singing even on the bus. I’ve led countless field trips to Washington, DC, with my students, and I probably have never imagined [that I’d] be in a police van, singing hymns with other Mennonites. It was the only thing that got me through it. It was almost this like Mennonite muscle memory of singing hymns, even after we were arrested. I don’t think people had a sense of fear. I know that’s not the experience of everyone who protests, but it was a very calming feeling to be singing hymns when at first I was so nervous.

AW: If you can tell us a little bit more about the arrests that happened and what was the strategy there. How do you say, Okay, we have to have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C?  What did that look like?

NM: Yeah. The strategy isn’t really to get arrested. It’s to go and sing in the Rotunda and to do that to raise awareness about what we’re calling for. The police’s response to that is to decide to arrest us. Because they decide to arrest us, it often leads to more media coverage, and our goal in getting media coverage is also to ask other Mennonites, other Anabaptists, other Christians and people of faith to join us in taking action, to see themselves as part of this movement.  That’s the purpose of doing civil disobedience. And like Michael said, it can feel really uncomfortable. It’s not supposed to feel comfortable.

AW: How is this different from other things Mennonites have done for peace in Palestine and Israel, and how does this complement other efforts, for example, MennoPIN, MCC, CPT and other groups?

SN: MennoPIN does an incredible amount of education work. Mennonite Central Committee continues to do direct advocacy, and they too have a Washington office, so there’s a collaboration there and working together. Specifically, most Mennonites have worked in ways that have not engaged the U.S. government directly, and this is what Mennonite Action is doing.

AW: What is our responsibility as Anabaptists and Mennonites to speak out against injustices in the world? How can others who are interested join this movement?

NM: There are lots of ways to join and participate in Mennonite action. We often release toolkits that are ways to learn how to take action in your own local area. We also have monthly mass meetings. If you’ve haven’t participated in Mennonite Action before, that’s a really good way just to join and hear what we’re all about and hear from some of our leaders.  Next month we’ll be having a mass meeting connecting racial capitalism to Palestine. You can find any of those events and some of our toolkits on our website, Mennoniteaction.org.

AJ: If anybody watching happens to be in the Michiana area, we are having regular potlucks as a way of gathering and being in community, kind of like the mass calls, but in person to learn and build relationship. We know that we’re stronger together, and we need this relational aspect of this work. We will be sustaining regular prayer services with others in the community as well. So there are a number of ways to get involved.

AW: Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Maybe one of you can share how we can find you in social media? How can people follow you?

NM: You can just follow us at Mennonite Action on almost any social media platform:  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. I think we’re on YouTube. We’re on all of them.

AW: Thank you so much, and we continue to pray and take action in order for the injustices in the world — all the injustices in the world — to come to an end. I know it’s very difficult work, and it’s one step at a time. But hopefully this is one step into that light [so] we can share a moment of peace.

AJ: We look forward to seeing folks [at] our gatherings. Thank you so much for having us.