In response to the zionist entity’s siege of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in North Gaza on Sunday, March 17, we called for an emergency action alongside Healthcare Workers for Palestine at Zuccotti Park to show the world that New York stands against the ongoing genocide and its continuous escalations. This was the first protest WOL hosted during the month of Ramadan this year, marked by grief and loss as the people of Gaza are continually starved, displaced, murdered, and tortured while Palestinians are banned from entering Masjid Al-Aqsa to pray.
Before the rally began, journalists filmed dozens of cops dressed in riot gear all around Zuccotti Park. The moment we started chanting, NYPD’s Timothy Beaudette attempted to put on a show of force by barging through the crowd and threatening to arrest organizers for allegedly using sound amplification devices. We continued to lead chants and raise our voices for Palestine unbothered and began marching shortly thereafter. As soon as the march began, police attacked protestors indiscriminately and targeted multiple WOL organizers for arrest, hoping to decapitate the march by disappearing its leaders.
One of the arrestees was Abdullah Akl, a prominent Muslim youth leader within both the community broadly and within Within Our Lifetime, It is not lost on us that he was arrested during Ramadan, while he was fasting along with so many of our brothers and sisters at protests, throughout the city, and in Palestine. Even though he was still in police custody during Iftar, the police refused to allow him and other Muslim arrestees to break their fasts.
As the protest continued, the flood split into several streams around lower Manhattan. Eventually, everyone reconvened at 31 Chambers St, where we took the streets and sidewalks outside of Eric Adams’ Iftar dinner, a desperate attempt to tokenize Muslims and co-opt the community’s faith to whitewash his unbridled support for genocide and contempt of Muslim political expression. As we protested, we broke our fast with water and dates on the streets of our city and continued chanting against the fascist, zionist mayor. A community member came out after disrupting the event and informed us that there were hardly any Muslims present at all. Even this desperate photo-op was a bust, showing that our people will not stand with genocide supporters and will not give them any opportunity to use us for political points.
Police—dressed in full riot gear, brandishing batons and shields—continually threatened protestors during and after Iftar, pushing barricades in on us and attempting to kettle us (an illegal policing tactic) multiple times. Eventually, they even called a Level 3 mobilization (the second highest for the NYPD, which requires all special units to be called into the area as squad cars are sent out from every command center in the city). No matter what they tried, however, our people’s will and determination to flood New York for Gaza prevailed and we successfully protested the event until its conclusion, at which point we shamed the genocide normalizers who were leaving the Iftar dinner, all while the entire area was shut down due to an abundance of officers crowding the street desperately trying to keep us on the sidewalk.
As Eric Adams and other zionist city officials host normalization events hoping to save their tarnished image with the Muslim community of New York City, the mayor’s foot soldiers are targeting Muslim protestors and leaders in the streets, arbitrarily arresting them, and denying them the right to break their fast and observe their traditions. The NYPD threatens us as we chant, pray, and break our fast. They dress up in riot gear to counter a flood of protestors using only our voices as we fight against the genocide of our people in Gaza and zionist politicians’ attempts to tokenize our community. During our first protest during the holy month of Ramadan, city government officials and the NYPD made clear to us their disdain for the Muslim community and the values of liberation and justice that we stand for. We have no illusions about who these so-called “leaders” are and what they stand for. We will continue to flood New York for Palestine and stand against the fascist politicians who attack us on the streets as they fund the attacks on our people in Gaza.
