As Dr. Lara Jirmanus spoke with the Sampan on the phone on May 28, a scan of the top stories on local newspaper sites around Boston revealed reports about the Karen Read case, the latest in the battle between Harvard University and the Trump administration, and immigration raids.
What was missing?
The 24-hour vigil that just concluded hours earlier in Cambridge, recognizing the more than 17,400 children killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. That number, for context, is far larger than population of children – 13,863 – living in all of Cambridge during the 2020 Census and rapidly increasing.
“It’s just an enormous moral failure,” said Dr. Jirmanus, a family physician and clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She participated in “They All Have Names,” the live-streamed vigil in Harvard Square that was held from noon May 27 to noon May 28.
Around 100 people – including parents, students, educators and healthcare workers like Jirmanus – were at the event over the 24-hour period, holding photos of children murdered in Gaza and handing out fliers and reading off names of the killed. Dozens more had helped in the organizing of the demonstration.
Despite the doxing and dismissing of people who speak out for Palestine, Jirmanus called it her ethical duty as a medical doctor to object to genocide. She also said it’s disheartening to see so little attention in the mainstream press given to the massive death, destruction and starvation in that region of Palestine.
“The U.S. media is participating in this,” she said. “They have blood on their hands.”
In addition to working as a family physician and her instructor role at Harvard Medical School, Jirmanus also advocates for immigrant groups and founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity, which advocates for an equitable response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
And she sees her advocacy for human rights in Palestine as an extension of her role as a care provider.
“True liberation only comes when everyone has rights,” she said, noting that she feels public perception is on the side of ending the genocidal attack on Gaza, although many U.S. political figures still support the military strategy of Israel’s current government.
“I think we’re all living an emperor-has-no clothes moment,” said Jirmanus. And, she added, for anyone who feels the massive death toll in Gaza is not their problem, she reminds us that:
“This is not something that’s happening in a faraway place. It’s something that couldn’t happen at all if we were not paying for it.”
This story was edited in part to reflect the number of people involved in the demonstration, briefly after being posted online.
