Over 200 activists with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), together with artists Nan Goldin and Molly Crabapple and filmmaker Laura Poitras, had been arrested for taking part in a sit-in for Palestine outdoors the New York Inventory Trade yesterday, October 14. The motion criticized the rising inventory costs of weapons producers resembling Lockheed Martin, the largest arms maker in america, amid Israel’s ongoing assaults towards Gaza and Lebanon.
The motion drew round 500 protesters, together with descendants of Holocaust survivors, JVP mentioned in a press release shared with Hyperallergic. Beginning when the inventory change’s buying and selling flooring opened at 9:30am, activists carrying “Not In Our Title” t-shirts fitted the purple clothes over Wall Road’s well-known “Charging Bull” (1989) and “Fearless Lady” (2017) bronze sculptures and unfurled banners that learn “Gaza Bombed, Wall Road Booms,” “Cease Arming Israel,” and “Fund FEMA Not Genocide.”
The Resistance Revival Refrain, a bunch of girls and nonbinary singers, carried out a call-and-response track. “Oh Palestine, you aren’t alone,” they sang. “We shall be with you, till you’re secure at residence.”
At the very least six activists additionally chained their our bodies to the constructing’s predominant entrance gates. Images and video from the motion present cops forcibly eradicating them from the location by carrying and dragging them away.
“I’m proud to be arrested with them if it helps amplify our message,” Goldin advised Hyperallergic.
The New York Police Division advised Hyperallergic that the group dispersed round 12:30pm with “a number of individuals taken into custody.” Goldin and Crabapple had been launched on Monday; NYPD has but to verify costs.
The protest coincided with the US observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day yesterday in addition to this weekend’s observance of Yom Kippur, the holiest day within the Jewish calendar. It additionally got here at a time when viral video footage from an Israeli airstrike that hit and ignited a Gaza hospital advanced yesterday, killing at the least 4 individuals and injuring dozens extra, appeared to indicate one man recognized as 19-year-old Sha’ban al-Dalou with an IV drip being burned alive, inflicting uproar on social media.
“Daily we see a brand new, unspeakable Israeli conflict crime on our smartphones,” Crabapple, a New York-based artist who participated within the motion, advised Hyperallergic. “Israeli bombs flatten residence buildings in Beirut and burn Palestinian sufferers alive in Gaza.”
“With their genocidal marketing campaign, Israel is destroying the individuals and locations I really like, with the enthusiastic assist of the US authorities,” Crabapple continued. “To protest is the very least I can do.”
Calling out the dearth of presidency help to Southern communities hit by the latest hurricanes Helene and Milton, the motion additionally referenced the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP’s 1987 protest on the inventory change, which pressured pharmaceutical corporations to decrease the costs for AIDS remedy.
“ACT UP’s first motion came about on Wall Road to protest the dearth of funding for AIDS care and medicines. At the moment, a rising anti-war motion returns to this road to demand healthcare not warfare,” mentioned artist and ACT UP activist Gregg Bordowitz, who participated in a lock-on motion on the inventory change two years later, disrupting the opening bell for the primary time in historical past.
“For these of us nonetheless alive right this moment the continuity of wrestle and dedication stays clear,” Bordowitz mentioned.
Candice Breitz, a Berlin-based artist who was not in attendance however shared images on-line in solidarity, advised Hyperallergic that protests like this weekend’s are “heartening.”
“As progressive Jews (alongside Palestinian, Muslim and/or Arab allies who’re likeminded), we’re smaller in numbers and instantly stigmatized after we stand behind protests which might be important of the continuing carnage of Palestinian civilians, ongoing Israeli insurance policies in relation to Palestine and Israeli state violations of humanitarian legislation,” Breitz mentioned.
Valentina Di Liscia contributed reporting.