Our hands alone can’t hold the grief we carry. In times of rapidly escalating genocide, we need spaces to mourn and repair moral injury so we can keep going. Hands for Palestine came together in order to create a space that simultaneously holds action, healing, and human creativity as part of a response to the enormous and ongoing loss of human life that has been happening in Gaza for the past year. 

As Ced Clearwater, one of the organizers and bodyworkers for the event, articulates, “our hands reach out toward our desires, they add personality to our voice, they hold the ones we love, they aid us in creating art and nourishing ourselves. Our hands shape our world and put our will into action. This event honors our hands and the different gestures they make that moves us in the direction towards liberation and safety for the Palestinian people and all people under immediate attack by colonial force.” It is with our hands that we reach to each other, and reach toward possibility. When we hold things together we are capable of responding to our world with so much more.

Hands for Palestine is a multi-fold event series with offerings of community art, bodywork, tattooing, and tarot. All proceeds go to the Middle East Children’s Alliance.