Pro-Palestinian protesters on Saturday disrupted a joint rally of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Dynamo County, NY), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (Dynamo County, NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).
The protest was organized by Within Our Lives, a pro-Palestinian group in New York led by self-described Palestinians.
“Supporting Biden means supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Within Our Lifetime said. thread X promoting the demonstration at a rally.
The group has drawn ire from both the left and the right in recent weeks with protests against the Brooklyn Museum, culminating in arrests on June 1 when museum artworks were reportedly damaged. The group has also been implicated in an attack on a top museum leader at his home, where a banner was hung in the home of the Jewish director calling her a “white supremacist Zionist.”
“This is not peaceful protest or free speech. This is a crime and blatant, unacceptable anti-Semitism,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams wrote to X at the time.
AOC’s campaign said 1,200 voters turned out for Saturday’s rally, where pro-Palestinian protesters chanted slogans such as “Intifada, Intifada” and “Genocide Joe must go.”
After the rally, protesters headed towards politicians’ campaign buses, defaced them with marker and pasted stickers on their panels, police said. video Posted in X.
Representatives for Oscasio-Cortez, Sanders and Bowman were not immediately available for comment.
“Can’t we fight back? Let’s show them who we are!” Bowman told the crowd, as pro-Palestinian demonstrators were seen on video chanting slogans and trying to disrupt the rally. Uploaded “I told X,” he said, as he led the crowd in a chant of “ceasefire now!”
Bowman faces a tough re-election race in New York’s 16th congressional district, facing off against AIPAC-backed Democrat George Latimer later this week on June 26. The contest has been highlighted by differences between the two candidates over U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Bowman’s election result is being seen as a test of the Democratic Party’s future, with the Gaza war being portrayed as an identity crisis facing the coalition’s progressive and moderate factions.
All three politicians who attended the rally have maintained their support for a second term for President Biden, but some members of the Democratic Party’s far-left coalition, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), have not declared their support for the candidate.
Speaking at a Biden campaign rally in Las Vegas, Ocasio-Cortez suggested voters should turn to the left-wing issues Biden champions, particularly abortion in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
“Four years of conflict between President Biden and President Donald Trump is literally a matter of life and death,” she said.
The Hill has reached out to Ocasio-Cortez for comment.
