St. Louis Activist in New Roger Waters Video

Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor and venerable member in the St. Louis peace community, was featured in a video for Roger Water's new version of We Shall Overcome. Epstein is a leader in the movement to end the blockade on Gaza, and was part of the delegation to the Gaza Freedom March that was turned away by the Egyptian Government at the border.

Here's Waters on the song and video:

Over the new year 2009-2010, an international group of 1500 men and women from 42 nations went to Egypt to join a Freedom March to Gaza. They did this to protest the current blockade of Gaza. To protest the fact that the people of Gaza live in a virtual prison. To protest the fact that a year after the terror attack by Israeli armed forces destroyed most of their homes, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings, they have no possibility to rebuild because their borders are closed. The would be Freedom Marchers wanted to peacefully draw attention to the predicament of the Palestinian population of Gaza. The Egyptian government, (funded to the tune of $2.1 billion a year, by us, the US tax payers), would not allow the marchers to approach Gaza. How lame is that? And how predictable! I live in the USA and during this time Dec 25th 2009-Jan3rd 2010 I saw no reference to Gaza or the Freedom March or the multi national protesters gathered there. Anyway I was moved, in the circumstances, to record a new version of ” We shall overcome”. It seems appropriate.
Roger Waters

Here's the video:

Hedy appears at the 3:35 mark:


Speaking of Gaza, there was a really interesting episode of Democracy Now last night that featured a journalist who managed to smuggle some video out from the flotilla (the Israeli government has confiscated all of the passengers video and film). H/T to this Daily Kos diary by Phoenix Woman for the link. Also, Max Blumenthal has been doing a stellar job of fact-checking the IDF on his blog. Finally, local activist Anna Baltzer, who was a guest on the Daily Show back in October of 2009, offered some of her thoughts on the flotilla last week.