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“This season feels especially urgent because the escalation of the genocide is happening at the same time that there’s less and less attention being paid to it — even as the violence increases,” Avi Steinberg, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Chicago, told me as we sat adjacent to the Kluczynski Federal Building in downtown Chicago on July 3. The building remains an epicenter of Chicago politics and government, and is, in particular, the local office of Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, who has previously been the target of pro-Palestine demonstrations and refused to meet with JVP. A group of local JVP activists — who, by that point, had been on hunger strike for 18 days in an effort to urge their political leaders to end military aid to Israel as it wages a starvation campaign in Gaza — had decided to head into the building and demand that Duckworth come out and discuss the issues that matter.

“We’re doing this because it’s unacceptable for our government to continue arming a genocide,” hunger striker Becca Lubow told me from a wheelchair, as she prepared to enter the building, sit at Duckworth’s office, and refuse to leave without a meeting. “I can definitely notice my body getting weaker. And I also feel really acutely aware of how much easier this is for me than even a fraction of the discomfort people in Gaza are experiencing.”

We took turns heading to the senator’s office, with small groups taking different pathways to avoid direct security intervention. Yet upon arrival, despite calling ahead to ensure that there were staff in the office, the door remained shut. “We’ve been trying to get a meeting with you for three weeks and you’ve been avoiding us,” said Lubow into the office intercom, pointing out that Duckworth’s staff promised a meeting that they then refused to honor. “So we are going to stay outside this office until one of you comes out and talks to us. So, save yourself some time and open the door.”

Eventually Homeland Security officers, the same department that has been participating in the mass ICE raids happening around the country, came in, arresting the small group who refused to disperse, including the two hunger strikers seated in wheelchairs. Downstairs a solidarity rally continued, with two of the other hunger strikers present. (Two others had to drop out of their strike after the health implications involved became too severe.)

“When our elected officials refuse to respond to clear calls for justice, we have no choice but to escalate,” Avey Rips, one of the four remaining hunger strikers on July 3, told Truthout from the front doors of the federal building. Rips pointed out that there had been a great amount of movement locally since they started their hunger strike two and a half weeks before, with multiple legislators who had previously been unresponsive agreeing to meet. The Chicago-based activists announced that the hunger strike had ended on July 4 after doctors warned that they could face permanent health effects if they continued it any longer, but the solidarity organizing generated surrounding the strike has continued.

“Just within Chicago’s organizing ecosystem, we’ve seen a lot of real solidarity emerge — not only within the Palestine solidarity movement but across the broader left. Allies have shown up for us, and we’ve made so many future plans with partner organizations we’ve worked with before,” said Rips. “The sheer amount of support we’ve received — hundreds of messages from across the country and the world, the hundreds of people who’ve joined in solidarity fasts, the dozens and dozens of actions led by JVP and PYM [Palestinian Youth Movement] chapters nationwide — it’s been incredibly heartening.”

But Duckworth had been a hard target, and, despite representing the largest Palestinian American community in the country, has done little more than offer........

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