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Barefield believes the Gaza war is a genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, calling it an “absolute genocide” and calling for a ceasefire.

So she voted unopposed by mail in Tuesday’s Michigan Democratic primary. She believes this vote is a way to send a message to President Biden: “If you don’t commit to a ceasefire, we won’t commit to you.”

I often heard this phrase on my first day in Detroit. It was half resentment and half anger. It felt to me like a last resort lament where people go to extremes because they feel unheard and ignored.

Barefield said that as a Jewish American, the war was terrifying because “Jewish values ​​taught us that all lives are precious.” She said: “It breaks my heart that this inhumanity, this violence, this brutality is happening in my name.”

I stopped because I had heard this line before.

Two weeks ago, I spoke with Dara Silverman, a 51-year-old Jewish woman from Beacon, New York. She described herself as white, Jewish and queer. She, too, calls what is happening in Gaza a genocide, opposes the Biden administration’s position on the war, and wants a ceasefire. If she could vote irresponsibly in New York state, she said, she would.

“As a Jew and as a tax-paying American, it’s horrifying that this is being done with our tax dollars,” she said. “And in my name, doubly so.”

Because of her views, Barefield said she was called an anti-Semite, a Jew-hater, and even told that she wasn’t really Jewish. But that hasn’t deterred her, and there’s no prospect that it could help elect Donald Trump.

“If Biden loses, it’s because he didn’t do the right thing,” she said. “He didn’t do the humane thing. He didn’t do the right thing for the American people.”