In "Newsom Country" on the Fourth of July, with Assembly Candidate Eli Beckman and His Supporters

And: some brief responses from pro-Israel Mill Valley City Councilmember Max Perrey

A week after FEMA, the agency charged with overseeing responses to disasters such as hurricanes and floods, announced $94 million in grants to (only pro-Israel) Jewish organizations, such as the ADL, to combat alleged “anti-semitism”, there was a Fourth of July parade that wound through Larkspur and Corte Madera.

Featured in the parade was Eli Beckman, the boyish Corte Madera City Councilmember from whom I have sought answers for over a year regarding his largely undisclosed, nearly $8,000 trip to Israel paid for by the de facto lobbying group, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area (SF JCRC).

The week of the parade, I had sent Councilmember Beckman another email requesting answers about the Israel trip and his ongoing ties to the Israel lobby. In the email, I updated him on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, including the murder of over 500 Palestinian civilians since May 27, as they tried to access desperately needed food aid. I reasoned that if I didn't hear back from Beckman, I could at least join the parade with a sign asking his constituents some of the unanswered questions — maybe they could tell me.

The sign asked simply, "Why did Council Member Eli Beckman take a $7,936.00 all-expenses-paid trip to Tel Aviv paid for by the Israel lobby?" The back of the sign read, a bit more cheekily: "When will we Americans declare independence from Israel?"

As the daughter of a (drafted) former US Army Captain who himself had no love of the military or of war, I am perhaps hereditarily lukewarm on Fourth of July parades. It feels especially odd to celebrate the United States at a time when masked ICE agents are disappearing working fathers and mothers en masse from Los Angeles, with no intervention from California’s Governor, who lives right here in Marin.

Maybe my own ambivalence was reflected in the crowd: both signs I carried got more praise and thanks than boos, which may reflect the overall sentiment captured in a June 2025 Quinnipiac poll showing that only 12% of Democrats now favor Israel over Palestinians. And at the end of the parade, the pro-Israel Mill Valley City Councilmember Max Perrey, who had marched alongside Eli Beckman throughout the parade, graciously approached me, and I was able to ask him some questions.

This article is going to forego the cheers and thanks from people in the crowd to focus on the stress points that show the reluctance of elected officials and their donors/supporters to reckon with their complicity in Israel's ongoing genocide. It may be important to watch how this transpires in Marin, as Governor Newsom, who has moved back into a $9 million mansion in Kentfield (previously owned by Daniel Pritzker, son of the notorious Jay Pritzker), gears up for a likely 2028 Presidential campaign.

Last Video First: Comments from Max Perrey

At the end of the parade, Mill Valley City Councilmember Max Perrey approached me and very politely introduced himself. Perrey was nice enough to let me ask him some questions as he walked. I was pretty out of breath at that point, but did my best. What I found interesting about his responses is that it seemed as if he still hasn't thought through what it means to support Israel during this genocide, nor has he read the case brought against Israel by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. It may merely be a reflection of how fatigued everybody felt after marching in the heat and interacting with the crowd for so long, but Perrey appeared to be incapable of even saying the word Palestinian when I asked him, in response to his statement that Israel has a right to exist, “at the expense of whom?”

Video: I (Claim To) Love A Parade

I had cycled over from the East Bay carrying the rolled-up signs in a duffel on my bike. I was pretty parched by the time I jumped into the parade, but I figured if I was going to protest, I should try to do it with a little bit of enthusiasm. Here's how that looked up until I melted in the heat:

Video: “You Got A Lot of F*$&-ing Nerve”

I guess some Nouveau Marin people don’t understand the whole concept of the First Amendment, they seem to think that I wasn't allowed to assemble in a public place, say things in public, or hold a sign with a political message. But those are among the many things the First Amendment is intended to protect. This particular man seemed to think my using the First Amendment meant that I had “a lot of (expletive) nerve”.

“A lot of nerve” is how I would describe people who get angry about an older woman protesting a genocide, but that's his right to say it. Salud, sweary-guy!

Video: Beckman’s use of child for campaign; followed by an unusual restraint placed on a woman by her apparent partner

Eli Beckman used a very young child to lead his campaign walk during the parade, and at one point the child was emboldened to instruct me to leave. It seemed like a manipulative way for Beckman to use the kid; my video avoids him entirely, but the child’s voice is audible telling me to get out.

But I'm more perplexed by what followed in the interaction between this white couple supporting Beckman from the crowd. It's one thing that the woman insisted that criticism of Beckman’s trip to Israel constituted “antisemitism”, or that asking about the children whom Israel is deliberately starving to death in Gaza was somehow “antisemitism”. What I was not prepared for was her partner’s response, which was a forceful muzzling of her actual mouth with his actual hand. (For all the claims that Muslim men are misogynistic, in all the years I had lived in neighborhoods in New York alongside Muslim families, I had never seen a single Muslim man lay hands on a woman in the way that this white man felt free to do in public.)

I didn't think the incident was necessarily about this couple. I do remember Marin County when it was less conformist and somewhat more liberated, and it struck me that his physical silencing of his female partner was an expression of the ugly culture that has overtaken Marin County in the last few decades: half Silicon Valley, half Stepford-Hell. And fully misogynistic.

Video: We love what?

This clip seemed very classic Marin, the woman is wearing a “No Kings” t-shirt, and her husband calls out “We love genocide!” These are the exact same people who will swear to you that they can't understand how they lost the election last November.

But as much as Israel's genocide of Palestinians grieves decent people, there are many in Marin County who are profiting from the genocide, and these types are inclined to make jokes when anyone raises the issue of our government's ongoing support of Israel’s slaughter. It's something I've been thinking about as I follow Peter Byrne’s series on the militarization of artificial intelligence. How much of that has lethal technology has enriched Marin County?

Video: Walt Beckman

The man in this video clip appears to be Walt Beckman, a $320-an-hour “clinical psychologist” — and apparently the father of Assembly candidate Eli Beckman. (Beckman’s parade retinue appeared to be made up largely of members of his own family.) It was apparently inconceivable to Walt Beckman that questions regarding his son’s curiously expensive JCRC-paid trip to Israel were of merit. He fell back instead on insinuating that the person asking the valid and reasonable questions was “antisemitic”. That does not exactly reassure me that he would be competent in his role as a psychologist, but fortunately he is out of my price range.

Video: Rachel Kertz, JCRC’s BANJO Co-Chair, Stands Sentry at the Parade Stand

San Rafael City Councilmember (and woman who called the police on peaceful student protesters and activists) Rachel Kertz is on the left of the frame in a white shirt and navy shorts. JCRC BANJO member Holli Thier was in a float near the end of the parade. (Eli Beckman is also a JCRC BANJO member.)

I found this particular promotion of Beckman at the parade stand to be almost surrealistically garish. There had been some comments that I shouldn't be bringing politics into the Fourth of July parade, but it was the hyping of various (pro-Israel) candidates during a genocide that made the parade explicitly political. ( I wasn't aware of it at the time, but Assemblymember Damon Connolly, who traveled to Israel on the JCRC’s dime in February 2024, was in a float at the very end of the parade.)

Video: White Homeowner Decrees: “You Don't Belong Here”

I don't have any illusions about this older woman who tells me in this next video “you don't belong here.” I don't think she's going to have any great awakening before she passes away with almost every need of hers attended to by underpaid (nonwhite) care workers. Growing up with an Asian mom in near-lily-white Marin, we often heard variants of "you don't belong here.” We also heard much worse, deeply racist things said in Marin about the civilians slaughtered in Vietnam, which left an imprint on us kids. And it's one reason why Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, which is so bitterly racist and has full support from our government, obliges me to protest.

The people I have shown you in these videos are promoting ideas that I think need to be challenged, and that's why I included them. But they are not the majority of people in this country. And even in “Nouveau Marin”, they were not even the majority of people watching that parade!

Video: “What's the punchline?”

“What’s the punchline?” the man asked me.

“The ‘punchline’ is there's a genocide and children are starving,” I offered.

There was an awkward pause. And then, faintly, he offered back, “Happy Fourth of July.” It was the best he could offer; I took it.

Onward:

I got some coffee and, before the bike ride home, I headed to the banner drop at Lucky Drive, which was organized by two outstanding, longtime pro-Palestinian activists. The signage covered nearly the entire overpass, a truly beautiful sight. After protesting solo, it was great to be in the company of others working on the same project.

Over the next two days, I started getting reports from other protests in Marin; from El Cerrito (where Jewish Voice for Peace was so numerous that pro-Israel US Senator Adam Schiff fled the stage); and around the country. I'm waiting on more photos and notes from those events, and hope to post soon, along with a report about the beautiful memorial Larry Bragman organized to mark David Glick’s birthday.

Wednesday morning is another Senate hearing in Sacramento for the anti-teacher, pro-censorship AB 715, and the teachers will be out en force. I plan to be there to report.

Thanks as always to readers for support, insights, amd inspiration. And hey, Happy Independence Day, for whenever you decide to declare independence.

©️2025 Eva Chrysanthe