The story of Sonoma’s Seth Donnelly is the story of the making of an activist. Anna Pier sat down with the high school teacher who has spent the last year at the helm of Taxpayers against Genocide in Gaza (TAG).
Your background? I grew up in a household of activists. My parents, Sara and John Donnelly – who are also locals – had been deeply involved in civil rights and registration of Black voters in the south, working with S.N.C.C. (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). They actively opposed the war in Vietnam, and when I was growing up, they were involved with anti-Contra, working to stop our U.S. tax dollars funding oppressive dictatorships in Central America.
Where did you grow up? In Pullman, Washington. My father was a professor at Washington State University.
Schools? Undergrad at Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio. ’88-’92. Those years it was a hotbed of anti-apartheid action. I majored in Interdisciplinary Studies of the Global South. I essentially focused on efforts to decolonize, puppet dictatorships, and neo-colonial relationships. I included movements to decolonize within the U.S.– indigenous peoples, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Black liberation. Asian vs, White supremacy.
Next? I moved to Chicago, where as a social worker, my work was with young adults in independent living. On my own I worked on issues of police brutality, and supporting political prisoners, including Shaka Shakur, who is still imprisoned in Virginia.
Then? I got my teaching credential, and taught social studies in high school in Mountain View/Los Altos for ten years. My students and I studied the impact of our tax dollars on Haiti, where the U.S. government was funding coups, inflicting great suffering on the people of Haiti. During my tenure there, I took students and staff to Haiti. We worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Haitian activists. The students witnessed the slow-motion genocide there – hunger, starvation and disease.
How did you decide to enter teaching? I grew up in a family of educators and was inspired by the good examples of my folks. I love working with people, learning more about the world, and raising the critical consciousness necessary to constructively change the world.
My last teaching was in 2023-24 at Rancho Cotate High, where I was advisor to the students’ Human Rights club. In December ’23, we organized a teach-in with Jewish and Palestinian speakers. In the spring we invited Congressman Mike Thompson to talk about US military aid to Israel. The International Court of Justice had found a plausible case for genocide. MEChA (a Chicano student organization) students came too, and others. The students asked the Congressman to stop voting for military aid to Israel. In April ’24 he voted for the Israel Supplemental Security Act, which included $15 Billion in weapons.
That summer, TAG was born.
Talk about TAG. Tarik Kanaana, a Palestinian living in Santa Rosa, and I founded it, also with AnnaMarie Stenberg, a veteran human rights activist from Mendocino. In September we filed a class action lawsuit against Congressmen Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman. In December we expanded the lawsuit to include all the Congresspeople representing the 18 counties that make up the Federal District of Northern CA., and included Senator Padilla and then Senator Butler. The defendants were served on December 24, 2024. There were over 1500 taxpayers in the class. It got national coverage – DemocracyNow, TruthOut, the SF Chronicle.
What has happened to the lawsuit? On February 10 the judge dismissed the case on the grounds it was asking the court to make policy outside of its jurisdiction. But it seems that Federal courts make policy outside their jurisdiction all the time, for example ruling on DOGE, and affirming immigration policy.
How many people have signed on to the TAG movement? About 4,000, including over 1,000 from Northern California, have officially signed up and endorsed the international legal complaint against the US government. Supporters of TAG are higher than this rough number. We started over with getting sign-ups after our federal class action was dismissed. Now the number is growing fairly steadily and will keep growing as our social media presence and public awareness about our international complaint grows.
What else is new? On October 7 we made history filing with the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights the only international complaint that takes on the Trump and Biden Administrations and the US Congress. The lead attorney is Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian.
How can readers sign up to be supporters?
By going to our website www.taxpayersagainstgenocide.org
As a child or young person what did you imagine yourself doing? Being a teacher. I had a great teacher in high school who also inspired me.
What do you do in your spare time? I like to go out and hear live music, write, exercise, and just enjoy unstructured time with friends and family.
Why and when did you move to Sonoma/the Springs? What do you like about it? My wife, who is a professor of Performance Arts at UC Berkeley, and I moved to the Springs in the summer of 2020. We love being close to my parents who are wonderful friends. We also appreciate the community in the Springs, and the natural beauty of the land. We look forward to a day when families here are not at risk of being separated by deportations. And we look forward to the day when the land has been returned to the rightful Indigenous stewards.
Where does TAG stand with regard to the current ceasefire and ongoing talks? Those of us in TAG hope that the ceasefire results in a permanent end to the Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza. However, we recognize that this ceasefire, as drafted by the Trump Administration, seeks to continue the colonial occupation of Palestine and whitewash genocide.
No matter what happens with the ceasefire over the coming days and weeks, the fact remains that the US government funded and drove this genocide for two years. US officials need to be held accountable. Without such accountability, the problem of US participation in crimes against humanity will continue and expand, with impunity, as it has been doing so throughout my whole life.
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