It has become increasingly apparent to me that many Americans don’t care about genocide as long as they’re able to ignore it and stay “comfortable.”

Since Oct. 7, more than 11,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, most of whom are women and children, according to an article by the Washington Post. That is one out of every 200 people in all of Gaza, according to the same article.

Imagine if within a month, one out of every 200 people in San José were killed by airstrikes and bombings. The number of people dead in that scenario wouldn’t even be half the amount of the real Palestinians who have died in this conflict.

This is a full-on genocide, being carried out by a country that is directly receiving aid from a large number of U.S. based companies.

Because of this, the boycott, divestment and sanction Israel movement, BDS for short, has gained nationwide attention as a part of larger pro-Palestinian protests in the U.S., according to an article by Vox.

BDS has listed several companies including Starbucks, McDonalds, and HP as companies it is urging people to boycott, according to the same article.

Pushback against these boycotts is simply complacency in genocide. There is simply no reason to support any of these companies when there are alternatives to almost every brand imaginable.

I’ve been boycotting the companies listed by BDS and going out of my way to support Palestinian-owned businesses since I became aware of BDS last month, and my life has not changed in a significant way at all.

I plan to keep boycotting these companies indefinitely, and I urge everyone to do the same. 

I find it both disheartening and disgusting that so many people are willingly ignoring the genocide in Gaza to focus on their own comfort. While hundreds are dying in airstrikes every day, the world is turning its back on Palestine because it makes us uncomfortable.

Now is simply not the time to turn away from the violence happening in Gaza, because that is exactly what facilitates a genocide to happen in the first place. 

I want to see people put money where their mouths are. I’ve long been tired of people telling me that they don’t care Chick-Fil-A supports organizations that lobby in support of conversion therapy because “there’s no way my single order could support that!”

Conversion therapy is harmful emotional therapy used to try to “cure” or “repair” one’s sexual orientation or gender identity,

That’s funny, because everyone who supposedly believes this and continues to eat at Chick-Fil-A is probably thinking the same thing, and Chick-Fil-A is still getting that money to support anti-LGBTQ+ organizations every day, according to a website from the National LGBTQ Task Force.

I’m a transgender person living in a country that is becoming increasingly keen on supporting bills and legislation that seeks to directly harm transgender people and remove us from public life. It does not make me confident that so many Americans seemingly don’t care about genocide if it’s not happening to them.

If you support a Chick-Fil-A, you might as well donate a few bucks to your local anti-LGBTQ+ organization, just to get ahead of the curve. Any amount of money given to support genocide is still support of genocide.

I’ve had to deal with the fear of the idea that my existence will be eradicated every day, but Palestinians are living in that reality. 

I can’t even imagine what it is like for the thousands of Palestinian children whose homes are currently being bombed daily, constantly at risk of losing everything that matters to them. 

But I’m sure they would love a Venti Frappuccino right now.