One California inmate’s efforts to help Palestinians suffering from Israel’s ongoing military campaign ended in a huge outpouring of support.
Last week, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Justin Mashouf shared photos on X of a pay stub that belongs to a 56-year-old man identified only as “Hamza.”
Hamza is currently serving time in a Northern California prison where he makes only $0.13 an hour working as a janitor. The work log Mashouf shared showed Hamza was paid $17.74 last October after working 136.5 hours over 21 days.
Hamza donated every last cent of those earnings to Gaza victims.
“An incarcerated brother I am in correspondence with donated $17.74 for relief efforts in Gaza,” Mashouf wrote on X. “This donation is the sum of 136 hours of his labor in the prison working as a porter/janitor.”
Mashouf’s post took off on social media, landing thousands of retweets and likes.
Mashouf launched a fundraiser on GoFundMe to raise money for Hamza’s reentry into society. Hundreds of donations poured in over the last six days, and as of March 5, more than $102,000 has been raised.
The Washington Post reported that Mashouf has known Hamza since 2009, when the filmmaker was working on his documentary called “The Honest Struggle.”
After seeing the news last year about the Israel-Hamas conflict, Hamza reached out to Mashouf to see how he could donate to civilians in Gaza.
“These last few months, he’s been very anxious about the state of the world, especially since he knows he is reentering the real world,” Mashouf told the Post in a phone interview.
Hamza was recently granted…
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