This past Sunday we conducted our weekly mobile distro. Despite the busy streets and crowds of green hindering our ability to get to some of the places we typically serve, we still found folks in the hiding places they told us about. We are thankful that the community trusts us with their hideaways; we can do our job better that way.

Since this distro happened on a day when many people were celebrating their Irish heritage, we wanted to highlight the struggles the Irish people went through and explain how the famine and mass displacement suffered by the people of Ireland, and the famine and mass displacement currently happening in Gaza are connected. They are connected because of a root cause: colonialism.

British colonialists and landlords in 19th century Ireland displayed genocidal intent as they exported millions of pounds of food to other countries while the Irish people were starving to death, and landlords destroyed their properties and evicted tenants just to get out of paying “famine relief” taxes. The genocidal intent of the IOF has never been more clearly articulated than today, in bombing and starving millions of Palestinians; but the roots of this famine and displacement go much deeper, starting with stripping the native populations of their food sovereignty through settler colonialism.

Our struggles here with food insecurity might not be at the same proportion as the examples above, but they too are connected. When food and housing are not viewed as necessary to life, but rather a means to produce profit for the ruling class, the system by design creates great inequality and suffering. The ruling class and the billionaires who control them have all the money and the power to end war, to end genocide, to end famine, to end homelessness, but they don’t. They will always prioritize profits over people. From Boston to Ireland to Palestine, the struggles of the oppressed are one struggle. #WarmUpBoston #ServeThePeople #SurvivalProgram #MutualAid #HarmReduction #MobileOutreach #EncampmentSupport #StPatricksDay #StPatricksDayBoston #Ireland #Palestine