From NYC to Palestine: Grassroots Movements Speak Out on Israel-Gaza War (original) (raw)
On a cloudy day in the Bronx, a group of high-school students marched down Fordham Road chanting, “Congress, Congress, you can’t hide! You’re supporting genocide!” As they walked under the train station, commuters stopped in their tracks to watch approximately 70 high-school students who walked out of class donning keffiyehs and posters with Palestinian flags. Some onlookers in this working-class Black and brown community even joined the march while others chanted in solidarity.
Afrin, a 17-year-old Bangladeshi high-school senior, organized the Nov. 9 walk out as part one of the global Shut it Down for Palestine days of protest calling on the Biden administration to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and to end all military aid to Israel.
A few weeks later, there was a week-long ceasefire before Israel’s war on Gaza resumed with even more intensity than before. The death toll in Gaza is nearly 19,000 as of Dec. 14, with around 8,000 missing or trapped under the rubble (although it is becoming harder to accurately track the data, says the Gaza Health Ministry).
‘We are asking people who are activated by these recent protests to join us and stick around for the long term.’
Sergio, NYC ICE Watch
Working-class New Yorkers who normally lead protests and organize around local New York City issues are now joining the movement to free Palestine. They are drawing connections between their struggles and forging solidarity with Palestinians that face bombardment in Gaza and settler violence in the Occupied Territories.
“Our government doesn’t care about democracy — they are making things worse for us,” said Afrin, “Stop funding this genocide. That money is needed for us, for our education.”
New York City has one of the most racially-segregated and unequal school systems in the country, which advocates fear will worsen under Mayor Adam’s latest round of proposed budget cuts to the Department of Education (DOE). According to the Independent Budgeting Office (IBO) and DOE data, parent associations exacerbate these inequalities. Schools with wealthier parents are able to fundraise to provide field trips, teaching assistants, arts and music teachers, and after-school programs, whereas schools enrolling more students living in poverty receive significantly less funding and are often unable to offer arts and music classes as a result. The IBO found that parent-teacher association grants per school can range from 192to192 to 192to728,749.
“Schools like mine, we’re struggling because we don’t have resources for electives, clubs, sports materials, gym materials, badminton rackets or even enough teachers because we’re so low staffed,” said Afrin. At her high school, 83% of students live in poverty, and the PTA generated approximately $4,500 during the 2018-19 school year, according to the DOE. Afrin has been fighting these inequalities as a member of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), which organizes working class South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrants around social justice issues.
TENANTS FOR PALESTINE
It’s not only students who are speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. Tenants across the city are drawing connections with Palestinian liberation efforts. For example, members of Equality for Flatbush (E4F), a grassroots organization that fights police violence, displacement and gentrification, have attended Palestine protests across the city with posters declaring, “Black Lives for Palestine.” The organization predominantly consists of Black Caribbean migrant women and according to a recent statement, the group “stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they fight for their liberation from a genocidal Zionist apartheid state… We know that there is no equal sign between oppressor and oppressed. No equal sign between landlords and tenants or BIPOC and the NYPD.”
In Chinatown, tenants are speaking up. Liang Ming Xue is a member of CAAAV, which organizes Asian immigrant and working-class communities across the city towards racial, gender and economic justice and fights gentrification and displacement. Xue has been living in Chinatown for more than 20 years as a tenant and says he has consistently faced poor living conditions. The Asian and foreign-born population in the neighborhood continues to decrease as working-class tenants face evictions, displacement and rising rents, which they argue are due to the increasing number of luxury apartment buildings in Chinatown.
While Xue, 70, has been unable to attend protests due to health concerns, he has been engaging in political education around Palestine with other CAAAV members. “Israel leverages the concept of terrorism to justify making war and to displace Palestinians from their homes in order to push for Zionism,” Xue said in Mandarin. “If the construction of luxury towers continues, then the Chinatown we call home is actually emptied of its original residents who face total displacement, and isn’t this a parallel to what Palestinian people are facing In their homeland?” Xue called on the government to redirect resources from Israel toward building deeply affordable housing and addressing the needs of working-class communities.
Pro-Palestine protests bring together New Yorkers across age, race and ethnic demographics. Even the flags at protests capture this diversity. A group of Peruvian immigrants proudly wave the Quechua Wiphala flag at protests, a symbol of the worldview and philosophy of indigenous groups across the Andean region.
“As Peruvians, if we’re against land theft from indigenous communities in Peru, how can we not be against land theft in Palestine?” said Yanett R., 32, a member of Kallpawan, a Peruvian diaspora group, “It’s so blatant, and we have the proof for it for many decades now.”
Last year, there were widespread protests across Peru after the impeachment and arrest of the former President Pedro Castillo amidst widespread inequality. Peruvian authorities killed and attacked protesters targeting indigenous and rural farm workers according to Amnesty International. Kallpawan and other groups organized a vigil on Dec. 8 in Washington Square Park for the martyrs of Peru and Palestine while commemorating one year of the Boluarte dictatorship in Peru and two months of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In Queens, constituents of Congresswoman Grace Meng’s gathered outside her office on Nov. 24. In an act of protest, they grieved the victims of the war in Palestine. They performed three distinct religious rituals capturing the diversity of Meng’s district in Queens. An imam from a nearby mosque led a janazah, an Islamic funeral prayer; a rabbi led a mourner’s Kaddish; and Mesita de la Memoria set up an altar for all of the deceased in Gaza.
THE USES OF GRIEF
“With grief, there’s a sense of not accepting that life just goes on and continues and goes back to normal,” said Milton, 39, a working-class constituent of Meng who attended the action. “Grief is a tool that allows you not to normalize this. Because right now, normalization really means being an accomplice to genocide, and I think people feel that in their gut.”
Meng’s constituents have been gathering outside her office to demand the congresswoman supports a ceasefire every Friday, but Meng has remained steadfast in providing unconditional aid to Israel. Her constituents have also created a petition, dropped a banner and created infographics publicizing that the largest contributor is the American Israel Public Affair Committee (AIPAC), which donated $82,250 to her campaign.
An imam from a nearby mosque led a janazah, an Islamic funeral prayer; a rabbi led a mourner’s Kaddish; and Mesita de la Memoria set up an altar for all of the deceased in Gaza.
“Working-class politics depend on strong moral compasses about what it means to take care of each other,” Milton explained. “AIPAC money is buying her silence and her silence is enabling the genocide to continue. If she wouldn’t raise her voice about a genocide, how do we expect her to have any sense of what is right for working-class people?”
Working-class New Yorkers use protests to confront the silence of elected officials that ignore their demands. Fahmida, 14, a member of CAAAV, attended pro-Palestine protests in her neighborhood of Astoria, Queens as well as in Washington, D.C. “I felt that I actually had a voice for once and an opinion that mattered. It’s ridiculous that instead of using billions of dollars to erase medical debt, student, debt, build public parks and gardens, the government is using the money to kill innocent people.”
Pro-Palestine protests have shut down various parts of New York City over the past two months as groups like Within Our Lifetime and the Palestinian Youth Movement continue to flood the streets.
For long-term organizers like Sergio with NYC ICE Watch, it is important to balance supporting migrants navigating the city’s byzantine shelter system and maintaining momentum in the fight for Palestine.
“It’s easy for moments like these to tap an organizer’s energy and attention instead of revitalizing it,” Sergio said, “The goal is for every action to be generative — for every person that does an act, it should bring in more people so we are asking people who are activated by these recent protests to join us and stick around for the long term.”
Afrin says there is no time to make excuses for inaction.
“We are living through this because when other genocides were happening, the adults in charge didn’t do anything,” she said, “so they’re not used to speaking out for change or people’s rights, and we shouldn’t be like them. We should be used to speaking up, being uncomfortable and making other people uncomfortable as well.”