More than 60 pro-Palestine protesters clad in red shirts and red keffiyehs marched across Broad and West Main Streets Wednesday night to temporarily block the Durham intersection during rush hour, stalling commuters who seemed mostly unbothered by the disruption.
Mothers For Ceasefire, an advocacy group of parents and caregivers who want an end to U.S. aid to Israel and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, organized the action.
Mothers For Ceasefire has held “Moms on Main” protests at the corner of Duke University’s East Campus every week since the war between Israel and Hamas started in October.
Wednesday’s demonstration, which was staged in tandem with the Triangle branch of Jewish Voice for Peace, was larger than usual, drawing around 125 people. It was also more disruptive.
Protesters said they were driven to escalate their regularly scheduled rally in the wake of an Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp in Rafah early this week that killed at least 45 civilians.
“There’s a reason we are wearing red,” says Brigid Flaherty, an organizer with Mothers For Ceasefire. “Genocide Joe [Biden] said there was a red line but he never defined it. We are the red line. A line has to be drawn.”
For protesters, though, a line also has to be walked. They need actions like these to be disruptive enough to get people’s attention but not so disruptive that they make people averse to the movement.
After briefly blocking traffic on Broad Street—where drivers are already used to being held up by freight trains—protesters turned left to push across West Main and then paused on the sidewalk to allow drivers they’d stalled to proceed. Protesters retraced that L-shaped route three times, clearing the road after each stoppage, then dispersed.
Some drivers who were stopped went out of their way to indicate that they supported the cause. One woman stuck her whole torso out the window of her car, cheered, and gave protesters two thumbs up. Several others rolled down their windows to chime in on chants.
Most drivers seemed disaffected, though, and it was hard to tell whether they were pensive, patient, or tuned out. Only one driver, a man on a motorcycle, engaged directly with protesters, shouting, “Why the fuck should I care about Palestine?” after he’d been stopped on Broad Street for about a minute.
He sounded aggravated. But he also sounded like he genuinely wanted to know. And that’s sort of the point, says Tim McGloin, a 79-year-old protester wearing a small Free Palestine pin.
“We’re out here not just because we’re pissed off, but because we’d like to get a message across to people in Durham: come join us,” McGloin says. “Join some demonstrations. Resist the best you can. This is a genocide. You can’t stand to sit around when a genocide is going on.”
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