Saturday, May 5

Like Gandhi or Jesus, I (and my group) make sacrifices for the betterment of others and the world. It was thus, in the name of good will, that I woke early on the once-sacred Saturday. My group and I embarked that day for Berkeley, where, in someone’s house, we would be bottling olive oil.

A few BART trains and a few blocks by foot and we (Carmen and I) arrived at the house, where Ali was putting a sign on advertising the bottling and selling. Inside we met the people in charge, read over the process of bottling, and helped ourselves to some gourmet, fair-trade, probably organic, coffee. The whole affair I felt was very Berkeley. The organization—which sells its olive oil under the name Hurriya, which in Arabic means “Freedom”—is run and operated by volunteers, politically-minded humanitarians such as you and I. It’s a small time operation (for now) that sells fair trade, organic Palestinian olive oil to support the livelihood of Palestinians and to fundraise for the International Solidarity Movement. The ISM sends members to Palestine to observe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and participate in nonviolent protestation against the Israeli occupation. Though the organization takes a partisan stance in its objective, the objective is one desired by both sides: peace.

We found out that the bottling process is more complicated than it appears. The process involves many steps, but with each of us specializing in one individual step, the whole combination moved along smoothly. I labeled bottles. Labeled them one after another. It’s a fairly tedious process, but fortunately by the 3rd hour it was an automatic, unconscious motion. It had an air of sweatshop labor without any of the harshness. The best part of the day was lunch. Palestinian food: falafels, dolmas, tabouli, pita, and lots of olive oil on everything. All that was missing was beer, but before we were able to fantasize it was back to work. Labeling, again, by now it was a little more tiresome.

By the end of the day we had filled, sealed, labeled, and boxed hundreds of bottles of olive oil. We sat through an ISM meeting afterward and then left feeling the lightness of charity as we set off to celebrate Cinco De Mayo.