SANTA ROSA, Calif – On May 23, local musicians, artists, and other community members came to mosh, eat food, and support Project Hope for Palestine in raising funds for aid to Gaza during Saturday night’s “Punks for Palestine” event at the Barrel Proof lounge in Santa Rosa.
The event aimed to provide donations and support to Project Hope for Palestine – a “mutual aid campaign on the ground in Gaza that aims at providing life-saving help to people.” Over $2,000 was raised Saturday night for children in Gaza.
Organized by Moira Scar and Skye Langenhahn of Punks United in Real Resistance (P.U.R.R), (formerly Sonoma County Punks for Palestine), the event hosted numerous local artists and musicians, including Speak for the Dead, Right To Remain, Bat Noise, Hard-Pressed Kiss, and Muster the Gusto.
Lead singer and guitarist for Hard-Pressed Kiss, Venus, spoke on the themes in the band’s song “Ronald Reagan Tried to Kill my Mom”
“It’s about trying to come to terms with the history of how I got to where I am through years of colonization and shit like that. Between not just what the Spaniards did to the Americas, but also what the US did in the 1980s,” said Venus, Lead singer and guitarist of “Hard-Pressed Kiss”
“My family’s from Nicaragua, so saying Ronald Reagan tried to kill my mom is a direct reference to the Iran-Contra Affair.”
At the event was also a petition to get General Dynamics, a weapons manufacturer, out of Sonoma County. The company operates a factory in Healdsburg.
Michael Titone is a Santa Rosa resident and volunteer tabling for General Dynamics out of Sonoma County.
“General Dynamics has a factory in Healdsburg. They’ve made border surveillance technology at that facility for a company called Controp Precision, which is an Israeli firm. It’s called SPIDER and CEDAR. They’re like border surveillance technologies that can either be mounted or go on a mobile device and scan swaths of area,’ said Titone.
“They’ve also made control actuation systems that are used to guide deadly projectiles. General Dynamics, as a whole company, has profited from the 2000-pound bombs that are being dropped on Gaza,” said Titone, “They’ve also profited from contracts with ICE, and for surveillance technology, and for databases, – they’ve also lobbied our elected officials to be, for instance, they lobbied for the big beautiful bill, which cut millions and millions of dollars from health services and gave it to ICE. So we don’t like how they are steering our government into more and more atrocious policies.”