
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – On Sunday afternoon, dozens of people gathered in front of Burlington City Hall in solidarity with the healthcare workers helping those affected by the war in Gaza.
“You know, wish so deeply to be able to care for people over there to .. for them to have basic medical needs met,” Jenny Watkins of Vermont Healthcare Workers for Palestine said.
Watkins says this is an emotional rally for her.
“The violence and the human rights atrocities are staggering, and I think as healthcare workers it’s because we work on the front lines with people’s pain and suffering and illness and injury seeing this really hits home,” she said.
Watkins says she hopes to grow community support for the cause.
“We really want to build and connect our networks and get our collective voices and power together to get our institutions active and against genocide for divestment, to discontinue the funding and profiting off of genocide or Palestinian people,” she said.
And she says she wants to see change.
“The institutions we labor for and learn with will not continue to be silent and inactive,” Watkins said.
We reached out to several synagogues in response to the rally but did not receive any statements.
Nurse practitioner Tristin Adie says she felt the need to try to make a difference with this rally.
“Especially as a healthcare worker my job is to take care of people and communities every day and to think about people dying of preventable diseases in Gaza because Israel is preventing basic things like sanitation and fuel and water and medicine is unconscionable,” Adie said.