For too long, our political ambitions have been constrained by what the old guard deems to be “realistic.” We’ve been told to temper our hopes, to accept half-measures and incremental reforms, all while the ground crumbles beneath our feet. Millions of Americans struggle to afford rent, health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, and billionaires reap the benefits of buying off our elected officials. The truth is simple: the status quo is unsustainable and tinkering around the edges will not save us.

But here’s the thing: the “realistic” argument isn’t just cynical. It’s false. We know these bold policies work. Countries around the world have proven that universal health care delivers better outcomes at lower costs. We’ve seen Housing First programs dramatically reduce homelessness where they’ve been implemented. We know clean energy investments create jobs and lower emissions. The data is there. The research is clear. The only reason these solutions are dismissed as “unrealistic” is because they threaten the profits of the powerful. Big money in politics has spent decades convincing us that what’s possible is limited to what they’re willing to allow.

That’s why Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York is so important. It’s a rejection of the politics of small dreams. It’s proof that when we lead with bold ideas, rooted in justice and imagination, people respond. Voters aren’t afraid of vision. They’re hungry for it.

Throughout our history, progress has only come when people dared to imagine something better. The labor movement imagined the eight-hour workday when twelve was the norm. The civil rights movement imagined equality when segregation was law. The New Deal imagined that government could be a force for the common good, lifting millions of Americans out of poverty. None of these transformations began with spreadsheets—they began with imagination, and the courage to act.

Now, we need that courage again. Zohran’s win shows that a new generation of leaders is ready to meet this moment with the scale and seriousness it demands:

• Medicare for All, so no one in the wealthiest country on Earth has to choose between health and bankruptcy.

• Housing as a human right, not a commodity to be hoarded.

• A democracy free from corporate capture, where the voices of ordinary people—not billionaires—shape our laws.

These aren’t radical ideas. What’s radical is accepting a reality where thousands die each year for lack of health care, where millions sleep in cars or on sidewalks, and where our planet burns while fossil fuel companies post record profits. What’s radical is doing nothing.

The question before us isn’t whether we can afford bold policies. It’s whether we can afford not to have them. Zohran’s victory reminds us that when we dare to imagine, organize, and fight together, the impossible becomes inevitable. If we can summon that same spirit across this country, there is no limit to what we can build together.

Make no mistake: the NFL didn’t choose him out of principle. They’re simply following the money. But that’s the key here. In the NFL’s relentless pursuit of profit, they still ended up spotlighting one of the most vocal critics of this administration: an artist with nearly 77 million monthly listeners behind him and all of the money that comes with us.

The White House is cracking down on corporations—with Nexstar pulling Kimmel to please the FEC and TikTok agreeing to suppress pro-Palestinian voices for their new deal—and still, the NFL chose to highlight an artist who would rather tell Trump off than ever cater to his agenda. Bad Bunny is more than a global phenomenon. He sells out stadiums. He shatters records. He uses his platform to celebrate cultural pride, diversity, and justice. But none of it would be possible without his 77 million monthly listeners. His power is theirs.

And that’s the point: in one of the darkest periods in our nation’s history, in what feels like a decades-long descent into madness, we’re still not powerless. Our dollars still matter. We still decide who we elevate, who we listen to, and who we support. And we can choose to support artists who stand up for what’s right, no matter the consequences. And if we go further and actually organize that power—if we united our economic strength—we could move mountains.

Yes, I’m talking about a general strike.

There are no more warnings, this is it. This is fascism: controlled media, crushed dissent, surveillance, and manufactured consent. But in this era of fascism, it relies almost entirely on money. Big money.

Big money owns the airwaves. It owns the internet. It’s racing to own the future of human technology. But here’s the good news: big money just follows bigger money. And despite wealth being increasingly hoarded by the elite, the consumer economy still runs on us. We are the majority. If we organized, stopped working, stopped buying, and stopped feeding the machine, we could halt this system in its tracks.

This isn’t a fantasy. It’s been done before.

In 1919, workers in Seattle organized a citywide general strike to support shipyard laborers fighting for higher wages after World War I. For five days, more than 60,000 workers across industries stopped work, effectively shutting down the city. In 1946, a general strike broke out in Oakland, California and thousands of union members across the city walked off the job for two days. And in 1955, Black residents in Montgomery, Alabama, began a year-long bus boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger.

Every one of these movements began with ordinary people refusing to be complicit. They took collective risks. Small at first, then massive. And it worked because a coordinated economic disruption has always been one of the most powerful tools ordinary people have to counter entrenched power.

I’m running for Congress because we need a government that finally works for the people, not just for billionaires and lobbyists. But we need to be honest: getting big money out of politics won’t happen overnight. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take building a real coalition of working people, organizers, and everyday Americans to get in Congress and pass the legislation that takes our government back.

But we can’t afford to wait.

The situation is urgent, and getting worse with basic rights being rolled back by the hour. So while we build the long-term political power we need to reshape our institutions, we also have to organize now. We have to be ready, when the time comes, to flex our economic power and demand a stop to this fascism.

We can still save this democracy. It’s only through democracy that we can build a future where getting sick doesn’t mean going bankrupt. Where every person has a warm bed and a safe place to call home. Where we can focus less on surviving and more on thriving. That’s a future worth fighting for.

We’ve always known our republic was fragile. And yes, we took it for granted. But the beauty of democracy is that it’s built on unity. It only works when we come together for something greater than ourselves—for our country, our planet, and the generations that will inherit both.

Each of us will be called to act, some in big, public ways, and others quietly, behind the scenes. But when we move together, in solidarity, there is nothing we can’t resist. There’s nothing we can’t change.

It won’t be easy. The most important things never are. But we can’t afford to sit back and hope the chaos disappears. Not while we still have the power.

So let’s organize. Let’s fight. Let’s win.

“Are we going to get out of this mess? I just don’t know that we will, it feels like it’s too late.” 

I hear this from voters all the time. I get it. We’re living in a time of complete and utter chaos. Disinformation spreads faster than the truth. A genocide, funded by our tax dollars, is plastered all over our screens. Wealthy donors and corporations have our government wrapped around their fingers. 

And at a time when we desperately need bold, progressive leadership, our party fails to deliver. That absence of leadership has cost us millions of registered Democrats in just the last five years, not because people gave up on the values we used to stand for, but because we stopped standing up for them.

We didn’t get here overnight. It was decades of unfair compromise, of politicians choosing their donors over the people they were elected to serve, of incumbents who stopped fighting for the communities that sent them to Congress in the first place.

If we want a different outcome, we have to make different choices. 

We’re at a tipping point—not just as a party, but as a country, and as people living on a planet in crisis. We can either continue on this path or we can choose something different. We can choose something better because we believe that something better is possible. That’s what it means to have hope and we need it now more than ever.

Hope isn’t blind optimism. Hope is action, courage, and the radical belief that, even in the face of enormous odds, we still have the power to change the course we’re on. The future isn’t written. It’s being decided every second. So let’s choose a better one.

The decisions we make in the next few years will determine whether we preserve our democracy or let it slip further into authoritarianism. Whether we use AI to empower people and improve our lives or allow it to become another tool of exploitation and control. Whether we tackle the climate crisis with urgency and innovation or leave our children to face the consequences of inaction.

We need fighters in Congress who understand what’s at stake. Not caretakers of the status quo. Not career politicians who’ve spent thirty years doing the bidding of their donors. We need people who are willing to risk something. People who remember what the Democratic Party used to be. A party that fought for labor, for civil rights, for social security. A party that fought for bold, progressive change.

We can be that party again. We have to be if we have any hope of getting out of this mess.

That’s why I’m running.

Because in our district, here in Denver, we’ve shown we understand what it takes to change the system. We believe in term limits. We’ve supported elections powered by small donors, not corporate checks. And we demand accountability. We deserve a representative who shares those values and will fight every day for a future worth believing in.

A future where every child is born into a safe and loving home. Where they can grow up with clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, access to an excellent public school, and affordable healthcare that actually meets their needs.

A future where housing is a human right. Where workers are protected by strong unions, paid fair wages, and treated with dignity. Where our democracy is transparent, functional, and accountable to the people—not special interests.

This future won’t build itself. But it is possible, if we’re willing to fight for it.

Hope is hard. It always has been. But in times like these, it’s also our greatest source of strength. Because when we believe change is possible, we act like it’s possible. And when we act, we build something real—something powerful—together.

So let’s start now.

Let’s choose a better future.

And let’s build it together.

Join us at kirosforco.com

On October 2, 2023, the government of Tigray declared a three-day period of mourning to honor those killed in the genocidal war against Tigrayans by the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments. An estimated 600,000 civilians have been killed, most buried where they fell. In November 2020, the Ethiopian government threw the Tigrayan region into a years-long communications blackout, so most families relied on word of mouth to hear of the murder of their loved ones. When possible, official letters were sent to the families of the fallen. For others, white tents were erected across the region, each with a list of their names — a list that carried several of my family members’ names. My father was in Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, during the mourning period. There was a white tent on every corner he turned. Every home plastered photos of their lost loved ones on the doors. He heard their cries everywhere he went. “It was inescapable.” Ethnic cleansing, weaponized starvation, dehumanizing rhetoric, and indiscriminate killing under the cover of darkness that continues still — all telltale signs of a genocide that echo in Palestine today.

Two weeks ago, I posted an open letter to U.S. Law Firms, responding to their letter to law school deans. The decision to write and post the letter was not one I made lightly. After spending three years alongside the Tigrayan diaspora begging the world to recognize and take action against the genocide being committed in Tigray, I imagined what it might have felt like to feel afraid to advocate publicly for my community. Today, any employee critical of the Israeli government’s actions, including those with innocent loved ones in Palestine being bombarded this very moment, are terrified of doing so. This is unacceptable. This culture of fear and intimidation prevents their crucial perspectives from being heard. Particularly when their perspectives are founded on the same information that has led humanitarian organizations around the world, including 100 U.S. State Department and USAID employees, to allege that the Israeli government is committing war crimes against the Palestinian people. The UN continues to plead that Palestinians are at risk of genocide.

My letter did not purport to reflect the views of my firm. Rather, I asked all law firms to acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinian people and the humanitarian crisis unfolding as a result of Israel’s disproportional and genocidal response to the October 7th attacks on innocent Israeli civilians; I criticized the intimidation and silencing of thousands of law students who may be critical of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy; and, I asked that the signatory firms condemn all acts of violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, equally and fairly. I did not, as some emboldened lawyers and law students in my inbox seem to believe, call for the extermination of Jewish people — a despicable and horrific accusation to level so callously. Instead, I expressly recognized the “[h]ateful attacks and acts of intimidation” against Jewish people around the world and stated that I “believe that the people in Palestine and Israel might one day live together as neighbors, in peace, without fear of persecution, under a new government.” Even so, I was terminated.

This culture of fear and intimidation signals to Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab employees, clients, and all of their allies, that not only is their pain and suffering not worthy of public attention or concern, but that it is somehow not possible to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis at the hands of the Israeli government in Palestine while also acknowledging the pain and suffering of the Israeli and Jewish community. For this, we should be ashamed.

Regardless of our political leanings or opinions, we must demand from one another the ability to hold multiple truths that allow for the recognition of everyone’s humanity and reject the notion that they may be contradictory. We can and should recognize and condemn the rising acts of anti-Semitism just as equally as we should recognize and condemn the rising acts of Islamophobia. We can and should recognize that the Palestinian people deserve the right to self-determination, just as all Jewish people do — just as all human beings do. Instead, while we mourn the innocent loss of life from the attacks on October 7th, the desire for justice and security has completely clouded over the empathy we should also have for the innocent and the vulnerable in Palestine.

When one condemns the bombing of hospitals in Gaza, they are met with the racist rhetoric of “human shields,” suggesting Palestinians lack the human trait of compassion for their own families. When one condemns the indiscriminate killing of innocent Palestinians, they are told, by the former Israeli intelligence chief no less, that there are no innocent Palestinians. When one condemns Israel’s weaponization of hunger and dehydration against Palestinians, a former colleague of mine can publicly question, without fear of retaliation, “Is the United States required to give Mexico or Canada food? Do you feed the homeless on the street out of your fridge/pantry?” Even as Jewish people in Jerusalem empathize with the Palestinian people, another former colleague of mine on a post calls them “self-hating, brainwashed Jews.” And when I, and countless others, attempt to provide historical context to explain this violence in an effort to prevent it from ever happening again, we are silenced, retaliated against, and accused of “justifying” terror attacks. The hallmark of the successful dehumanization of a people is when all empathy and all reason go out the window.

In their letter, U.S. law firms rightfully condemned the rising acts of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the past month. But in threatening the employment of thousands of law students by conflating the geopolitical question of Israel’s legitimacy with anti-Semitism, they all but deemed anyone who does not believe in the legitimacy of theocratic ethno-states as hateful. Some of my former colleagues publicly supported this letter on their LinkedIn profiles. They also publicly posted their personal views regarding the conflict on LinkedIn, much of which I considered to be either inflammatory, misleading, or, quite simply, false. While I fundamentally disagree with some of these online posts, I believe it is their right — and everyone’s right — to share their political opinions publicly, without fear of retaliation.

U.S. law firms have shown an unwavering commitment to silencing and intimidating expressions of sympathy for Palestinians and the 13,000+ lost Palestinian lives since the October 7th attack. The individuals expressing sympathy and being retaliated against for it are overwhelmingly people of color. Firms’ disparate treatment of these dissenting current and future attorneys while allowing inflammatory and misleading posts to continue begs the question: are the DEI programs these firms so proudly champion nothing more than a marketing scheme?

Censorship of dissenting voices from the firm’s public and political stance on any issue is antithetical to promises of diversity. Palestine is no exception. By definition, diversity includes differences of thought and opinion. Silencing dissenting voices hinders our collective ability to engage in meaningful discourse and cultivate a culture of mutual understanding and respect. Of course, this is not an open call for hate speech, and you, the intended reader, know that. Reciting facts from reputable NGOs, human rights and peace organizations, and state department officials is not the type of speech that can rationally warrant censorship or be labeled hateful.

As young attorneys, we were promised work environments that encourage open dialogue and respect diverse perspectives — perspectives that necessarily include the right to express solidarity with marginalized communities. Why is outrage for Palestinian-civilian deaths exempt from that promise? I chose to join this dialogue (one that my former colleagues have so comfortably engaged in publicly) because of my identity as a woman from Tigray. I have witnessed how a government uses censorship and dehumanization tactics to disguise its genocidal, state-sanctioned violence against an innocent group of people as a “military operation.” My former colleagues’ perspectives were all informed by their own unique experiences, and each of our perspectives deserved to be treated equally.

The recent terminations of employees for merely expressing the view that Palestinians are entitled to life and liberty — unalienable rights given to all humans by their Creator — is a direct manifestation of the failure of DEI committees to safeguard the voices of diverse attorneys. Putting aside the fact that one-sided statements by law firms signal the obvious exclusion of minority voices from decision-making spaces, terminating dissenting voices is the very definition of exclusionary. Upholding the values of free expression and protecting employees from unjust repercussions is paramount to fostering a workplace culture that champions inclusivity.

DEI is actualized when all individuals feel empowered to express their perspectives without fear of discrimination or retribution. Instead, dissenting voices are being silenced by the very institutions that provide them with their livelihood. The power imbalance at play is significant and, at this moment, distressingly tangible. What does this say about our profession and our commitment to freedom of speech when so many of us who were promised a diverse, equitable, and inclusive space are so afraid to speak freely about the systems of oppression and injustice with which we are all too familiar?

Beginning on November 1st, 2023, numerous US law firms, including my own, signed a letter. This letter rightfully rebukes the anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry of all kinds that has spiked in recent weeks, but then goes on (to my confusion) to cite “calls for the elimination of the Israeli state” as anti-Semitism.

Anti-semitism has fittingly been called “the longest hatred.” It has been so for thousands of years and has led to the death and suffering of millions of Jewish people around the world. To conflate such bigotry with the geo-political question of Israel’s legitimacy is one of the greatest travesties in this conflict. While the letter makes no explicit threats against one’s potential employment with the signatories’ firms, the chilling effect is undeniable. The right to question not only the legitimacy of a government but also its actions is the bedrock principle of a true democracy. And despite claiming to be the one and only democracy in the Middle East, the Israeli government has weaponized anti-Semitism to defend its crimes against the Palestinian people and quell any resistance or critique against it.

Take, for example, the accusation of apartheid. Israel has been accused of committing the crime of apartheid for decades, even as early as 1961 when South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd scoffed at Israel’s vote against his own government’s apartheid, for “[t]hey took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, Yesh Din, B’Tselem, the International Federation for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, and Former President Jimmy Carter have all accused the state of Israel of apartheid against the Palestinian people. NGOs, activists, and politicians have leveled this allegation against the Israeli government, but to no avail. Instead, the Israeli government claims these conclusions are false, biased, and anti-Semitic.

There are deep, historical, and religious wounds that plague this conflict and cloud our ability to judge it clearly, but there are also irrefutable truths. Historic Palestine was promised by a brutalizing imperial power (for purposes motivated by their own anti-Semitism) to a minority of Jewish people who subscribed to Zionism, with no consideration given to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who already lived there. This was, by globally recognized definitions, colonialism. Colonialism, as we so intimately know, cannot take place without violence against its indigenous people. Instead of acknowledging their plight as a direct result of Israel’s occupation, scores of excuses attempt to discredit the indigeneity of the Palestinians and the existence of Palestine itself, as if to excuse the horrific violence they have endured at the hands of the Israeli government and its settlers since 1917 — the kind of violence that corrupts the soul, as Ta-Nehisi Coates put it.

Corruption that led to the slaughter of 15,000 Palestinians, the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians, and the capture of 78% of Palestinian land in 1948. Corruption that led to the massacre of hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian and Lebanese Shias, at the hands of Christian Lebanese militias, as the Israeli Defense Force stood idly by, bearing responsibility by their own admission and the UN’s. Corruption that uses the excuse of “security concerns” to justify Israel’s apartheid, where Palestinians’ freedom of movement, right to vote, and right to dignity is severely restricted, if not completely prohibited. Corruption that results in the genocidal rhetoric of Israeli government officials, like Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu tweeting, “Blow up and flatten everything…we are giving out lots to all those who fought for Gaza”; or like President Isaac Herzog saying, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible…[The civilians] could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat”; or like Former Israeli National Security Council head Giora Eiland, who argued that “Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf”; or like the published paper by an Israeli government ministry that stated, “There is currently a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip.”

Violence corrupts the soul, and it does so by breeding more violence. There has never been, in the history of the entire human race, a people whose land was violently taken from them, whose freedoms and rights were relegated to second-class citizenship, and whose very existence was systematically threatened by its occupier, who did not resist with violence in kind. And yet, acknowledging the seemingly obvious symptom of violent resistance to violent colonialism has led to the loss of employment and freedom to numerous individuals, particularly in places that claim to value freedom of speech. I can find no words that better describe the cyclical nature of colonialist violence than that of French Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s, paraphrased by Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a lecturer at the David Yellen College of Education in Jerusalem, in a faculty WhatsApp group chat discussing the October 7th attacks: “‘After so many years that the neck of the occupied has been suffocating under your iron foot and suddenly was given a chance to raise his eyes, what kind of gaze did you expect you would see there?’ We saw this gaze.” Hours later, Ms. Peled-Elhanan was suspended for expressing “justification to the heinous act.”

The most shameful chapters in our global history have always resulted from one group’s inability to separate another group’s identities and experiences from our shared humanity. There is no justification for the attacks on Israel on October 7th, just as there is no justification for the disproportionate and collective punishment being waged on the Palestinian people by the Israeli government in retaliation, but it cannot be forgotten that violence does not occur in a vacuum. When we fail to ask what could drive people to such horrific violence, we fail in our duty to one another to prevent the conditions that allowed it from ever happening again. When we fail to condemn acts of violence equally, regardless of the perpetrator, we doom any opportunities for meaningful, equitable change. In this, we are constantly failing.

A study in 2010 found that the New York Times covered Israeli deaths and Palestinian deaths at a ratio of 25:1. Today, coverage of the conflict continues this pattern. Palestinians “die” while Israelis are “killed.” Acts of Palestinian resistance are labeled “terrorism,” while acts of Israeli settler violence are called “vigilantism,” the very same settler violence responsible for the over 133 Palestinians murdered and 1800 arbitrarily arrested in the West Bank since the October 7th attacks near Gaza. Hamas operates exclusively in Gaza, so what justification could there possibly be for such violence? There are none — not now, not ever — and yet, the government of Israel attempts to by claiming “self-defense” and “security concerns” — terms that are meant to disguise the innocence of the Palestinians being victimized by their violence.

The history of this conflict is complex, a solution to this violence has evaded the world for decades, and there is still no end in sight, but we cannot let the painful nature of this moment stop us from remembering in one another our shared humanity and our responsibility to condemn any government’s systemic oppression and murder against innocent people. We cannot fulfill these duties when any critique leveled at the Israeli government, and the Zionism that inspires it, is callously characterized as anti-Semitism. Centuries of persecution across the globe and one of the most calculated and horrendous genocides in history do not preclude the government of Israel and its settlers from committing their own discriminatory violence. In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, dedicated “to the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side,” Paulo Freire writes this: “It is easy for the oppressed to fight their oppressors only to become the polar opposites of what they currently are. In other words, this just makes them the oppressors and starts the cycle all over again.”

Just as we all have a great capacity for tolerance and kindness, so too is our capacity for oppression and cruelty. Our only hope of creating a world where this kind of violence and oppression no longer exists requires us to acknowledge any and all injustice wherever it festers and reject it in the fiercest terms.

On October 7th, 2023, Hamas perpetrated an attack where 1,400 innocent Israelis were killed, 4,500 were injured, and 203 were taken hostage. Today is November 7th, 2023, and as a result of Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, at least 10,022 Palestinians have been killed, 70% of which are women and children, 32,000 have been wounded, thousands of Gazans working in Israel at the time of the October 7th attack have been expelled back to the war zone where at least 45% of their homes have been destroyed by 10,000 plus Israeli bombs, and an estimated 1.4 million have been displaced. UN special rapporteurs are “convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide.” The heads of 18 UN agencies have made an incredibly rare joint-statement calling for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”

Hateful attacks and acts of intimidation have sharply risen against American Jews, regardless of their political ideology and whether they subscribe to Zionism. Hateful attacks and acts of intimidation have also sharply risen against American Muslims, regardless of their national origin. Hateful attacks and acts of intimidation have also sharply risen against American Sikhs, a community far removed from this conflict. All of these hate crimes stem from the same deeply misguided belief that we must answer for the actions of those who share our race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and so on, and so on…

While the letter that over 100 US law firms (and counting) have signed condemns bigotry of all kinds, it only calls out specific examples of anti-Semitism, begging the question, do you consider some acts of hate against one group to be worse than another? By chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy, you are complicit in Israel’s weaponization of anti-Semitism against legitimate concerns for the right of self-determination and the livelihood of the Palestinian people. By conflating “calls for the elimination of the Israeli state” with anti-Semitism, you delegitimize any solution that forces Israel to reckon with its colonial role in Palestine, including one-state solutions called for by Palestinians and Israelis alike — one state, under the historic Palestine, where all citizens are equal under the rule of law, regardless of religion or ethnicity. As stated by Palestinian lawyer Michael Tarazi:

“Support for one state is hardly a radical idea; it is simply the recognition of the uncomfortable reality that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories already function as a single state. They share the same aquifers, the same highway network, the same electricity grid and the same international borders…[The one-state solution] neither destroys the Jewish character of the Holy Land nor negates the Jewish historical and religious attachment (although it would destroy the superior status of Jews in that state). Rather, it affirms that the Holy Land has an equal Christian and Muslim character. For those who believe in equality, this is a good thing.”

Perhaps it is naive to believe that the people in Palestine and Israel might one day live together as neighbors, in peace, without fear of persecution, under a new government, but it is not hopeless, and, most importantly, it is not anti-Semitic. I sincerely hope you take my words in the earnest spirit I am giving them and reconsider your signatures on this letter by recognizing that there is no path toward peace if we do not allow the legitimacy of governments and institutions around the globe to be questioned and criticized, regardless of where they are or who they serve.