This sentencing statement was delivered to the US Federal Court in Syracuse, NY, by Ellen Grady, who was arrested when demanding that her right to petition the government for a redress of grievances be honored by the Federal Police
“Good afternoon, Judge Dancks. And good afternoon to all the people working in the court.
I’m grateful for this moment to say a few remarks before my sentencing.
70,000 Palestinians have been murdered with US weapons and funding
20,000 of them precious children,
112,000 people injured
14,000 people are missing in Gaza, many of whom are still buried under the rubble.
A little girl named Hind Rajab, whose story I shared during the trial, cried out for help from her family’s bullet-riddled car:
“Come take me. You will come and take me?… I’m so scared. Please come. Please come and take me…”
The two ambulance workers who tried to save Hind were given permission by the Israeli Defense Forces to rescue her. Yet, they were incinerated by a US-made weapon fired by the Israeli Defense Forces.
As we know, Hind and her family were murdered in that car by 335 bullets. Nobody was allowed to rescue her. Her 5-year-old dear self. God forgive us.
Your honor, you have determined that I am guilty of unreasonably blocking a door and that I didn’t follow a lawful order.
Today, I am being held accountable for my actions on November 15, 2024, and I stand before you to accept that responsibility.
The central question during my trial – what is reasonable in the face of genocide – still stands before this Court today and before all people of conscience:
IN light of the documented genocide committed against the Palestinian people by Israel;
IN light of the fact that the United States has supplied the weapons to commit this genocide;
In light of the fact that under US law, specifically the Leahy Laws and US code against genocide, it is illegal to sell weapons to countries committing gross human rights violations;
IN light of the fact that our leaders, specifically Secretary Blinken and President Biden, knowingly suppressed our own intelligence documenting this ongoing genocide;
IN light of the fact that US aid to Israel – my and your tax dollars – continues to flow while Israel continues its genocidal killing in Gaza and the West Bank – despite the purported ceasefire.
IN light of all of this, the question before this Court – and for all whose tax dollars are funding genocide – is:
What is reasonable? Who will hold our government accountable for breaking the law?
Who will uphold the laws that have been hard won? Laws that are meant to prevent war crimes and genocide.
Who?
What’s your responsibility, Judge Dancks?
What is your responsibility, Mr. McCrobie?
US law is clearly being broken. Genocide is a crime.
We all have a duty to uphold these laws. You do, Your Honor. You do, Mr McCrobie.
Our US Senators do. In a democracy, everyday people do.
I do. And that is what I came to this Federal Building to do on November 15, 2024.
The prosecution contends that I am just a recidivist who has no regard for the law. The contrary is true. My action on November 15th – and all the other times I’ve been arrested for acts of civil disobedience – have been attempts to uphold laws.
The United States’s government is the one breaking the law with its aggressive war-making and proxy wars. In my lifetime, the government has taken the lives of over 2 million Vietnamese, 58,000 US servicemen, a million people in Central America, over a million people in Iraq, untold numbers in our illegal and immoral drone wars – the list goes on and on.
The prosecutor speaks as if he does not know history. There has been no significant change in this country without everyday people coming together, organizing, and calling those in power to accountability through many forms of protest, including acts of civil disobedience.
The abolitionists, Susan B. Anthony and the women’s suffrage movement, the labor movement, Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the Stonewall uprising that started the gay rights movement, the environmental movement and the Black Lives Matter movement, to name a few.
Just across the street from this courthouse in Clinton Square, there is the monument to the Jerry Rescue, where people from Syracuse helped to free a formerly enslaved man named Jerry from the local jail after he had been hunted and jailed by Federal Marshals under the Fugitive Slave Act.
The good people of Syracuse knew back then that sometimes it is reasonable and necessary to take extraordinary actions in the face of injustice, even if it means breaking the law.
As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King – a courageous leader who our government honors with a Federal holiday – said:
“There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed.”
The US-funded genocide in Gaza is a raging fire.
The erosion of our First Amendment rights is a raging fire as the government criminalizes any criticism of Israell’s genocide in Gaza. There is no Israel exception to the First Amendment!
The blatant violation of Due Process by the Trump Administration is a raging fire. Mahmoud Kahlil, a Green Card holder who has not been charged with any crime, let alone been convicted, was ripped from his pregnant wife and disappeared into a jail cell for sounding the alarm about the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Dr. King’s quote ends with a call to action that is as urgent today as it was when he wrote it:
“Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.”
I ask this Honorable Court and Mr. McCrobie to join me in demanding that our government uphold its laws against funding genocide.”