Artists Nan Goldin and Molly Crabapple, in addition to filmmaker Laura Poitras, have been among the many greater than 200 activists with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) arrested throughout a sit-in for Palestine outdoors the New York Inventory Trade on Monday, as first reported by Hyperallergic.
Round 500 activists, together with some descendants of Holocaust survivors, arrived on the opening of the inventory alternate in Wall Road sporting crimson “Not In Our Title” t-shirts. Purple clothes bearing the phrases “Cease Arming Israel,” and “Fund FEMA Not Genocide,” have been fitted over the tourist-favorite “Charging Bull” (1989) and “Fearless Woman” (2017) sculptures. Round 10 activists chained themselves to the Wall Road gates, the oldest being 82-year-old MacArthur fellow and Hunter professor emeritus Ros Petchesky, in response to Democracy Now!. Photographs and video shared by JVP present handcuffed activists, together with the aged, dragged and carried away from the premises by New York Metropolis cops.
“I’m proud to be arrested with them if it helps amplify our message,” activist-artist Nan Goldin, who has been an outspoken opponent of Israel’s presence in Palestine, instructed Hyperallergic. Goldin and Crabapple have been reportedly launched on Monday.
The demonstration was organized after the US authorities introduced the deployment of American troops and a brand new missile system to Israel to assist its year-long aerial and floor assault of Gaza, and now Lebanon.
For context: In response to a report from Brown College’s Prices of Struggle undertaking, the US has authorised $17.9 billion in “safety help” to Israel for the reason that October 7 Hamas assault that killed 1,200 Israelis. That determine consists of the usual annual $3.8 billion help bundle supplemented by $14.5 billion in extra public funding. That report confused that whereas this determine is “considerably” greater than every other recorded for the reason that US authorities began approving army help to Israel in 1959, it represents solely a partial quantity of the US monetary and army help granted inside this yr (for instance, US-backed army operations within the broader area, such because the offensive in opposition to Houthis in Yemen who oppose Israel).
As of September 29, the human toll of Israel’s warfare in Gaza is 41,595 Palestinian lives, per the Palestinian well being ministry. (Gaza’s cultural landmarks have additionally sustained injury or destruction inside this yr.)
The protest on the Inventory Trade marked Indigenous Folks’s Day in the USA, and got here through the circulation of a video on social media of the Israeli airstrike that struck and ignited the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the place displaced Palestinians have been sheltering. JVP activists have additionally drawn consideration to the plight of communities within the American south, which have referred to as for extra authorities help after hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“Day-after-day we see a brand new, unspeakable Israeli warfare crime on our smartphones,” New York-based Crabapple, instructed Hyperallergic. “Israeli bombs flatten condominium buildings in Beirut and burn Palestinian sufferers alive in Gaza.”