US elections 2024: Pro-Palestinian protesters denounce Democrats in New York City
On election night on Tuesday, protestors in New York City came to reject the US presidential election, calling it a farce.
Hundreds of people assembled under the towering skyscrapers of JP Morgan and Newscorp in Midtown Manhattan.
An ensemble performed and the crowd chanted and sang rhythmically.
The buoyant scenes betrayed the outrage and urgency for which they had assembled.
“Remember Hiroshima. Remember Vietnam. Democratic Party, we know what side you’re on!”
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Organisers said that they came to remind voters that while they waited in the queue to vote for their next president, several Israeli air strikes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza killed at least a dozen Palestinians.
Organisers added that they had come to remind Americans that no matter who they elected tonight - Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump - the country would still be complicit in the long war against the Palestinians.
For those considering Harris as “the lesser evil,” Nerdeen Kiswani, one of the organisers of the protest, said, “We should not be voting for the Democrats. We should be charging them with war crimes.”
One protester, Jacqueline, told Middle East Eye that she voted for the Green Party's Jill Stein before making her way to the protest.
“I voted for a third party because I believe in building a third party option. But I also don’t believe that this is a democracy. It’s an oligarchy,” she said.
“I guess what Trump has going for him is that he is blatant about his agenda. I think it’s the Democratic Party that is more insidious,” Jacqueline, who asked to be referred to by her first name only, said.
Fear of Trump
Some blocks away, in a dimly lit New York street, a Black woman walked out of one of hundreds of polling stations set up across the city. She said that the only thing that was easy about the vote was the process.
“It was all a circus,“ Sam Arbor* said, shaking her head.
Arbor, of Cuban heritage, said though she voted for Harris, she wasn’t a fan.
“I would have put Bernie’s [Sanders] name in there, if I could,” she laughed.
“President 45 (Trump) is very popular - and so I voted for her [Harris] just in case people voted for him. And I think of how he talks about people of colour and that makes me fear for Black people,” she said.
“I think there are a lot of people who have an issue with the idea of a woman running the country.”
But Arbor said that if you asked what Harris has done over the past four years, she wouldn’t know.
“She was part of the admin for the past four years but you never saw her. She barely made any noise. If I was the first woman VP, you would have seen me or even my shoes. It’s bs if you ask me,” Arbor said, adding, “I got a feeling he is coming back.”
Like many others, Arbor is not fully in tune with the details of the war in Gaza, but when asked about her thoughts, she leaned in and whispered: “Whatever is happening, it's probably America’s fault."
Back at the protest, organisers kept up the energy under the fully lit skyscrapers.
The brass ensemble lifted spirits through a rendition of the revolutionary “Bella ciao”, as economic news on a ticker-tape machine on Newscorp's facade rolled by.
Around the protesters who were draped in keffiyehs and carrying placards and banners, several dozen police officers hovered, as they have done so at every protest over the past year. They held their caps and belts as if preparing for a riot.
But the crowd ignored them.
“Say it clear! Say it loud! Gaza you make us proud!” they roared.
Close to 9pm local time, as polls closed across the city, the protesters assembled and began to march down 6th Avenue.
Across the road, outside the lobby of the JP Morgan financial centre, the small band of Israeli supporters who had come to oppose the pro-Palestinian and anti-war protesters folded their flags and dispersed, as they always do, in the opposite direction.
*Name has been changed
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