Mass Action Targets Schumer and Gillibrand Ahead of Senate Vote on Israel Aid |
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On Monday, April 13, the scene in front of Senators Chuck Schumer’s and Kirsten Gillibrand’s offices in Midtown, Manhattan was too quiet, the couple hundred New Yorkers inconspicuously gathered in hoodies and jackets dressed too warm for the mild spring weather. Even the uninitiated had an inkling that something was afoot — a staffer returning from a coffee run cried out: “What the fuck, is this a protest?”
On cue, the uncanny hush erupted into an emphatic chant: “Stop the bombs, end the killing / fight like hell for the living.” The people in the crowd unveiled their matching undershirts, which read: “Fund people, not bombs.”
In a few days, the Senate will likely vote on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s joint resolutions of disapproval (JRDs) that would block more than $650 million in U.S. weapons sales to Israel amid ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the U.S.-Israeli wars on Iran and Lebanon.
The JRDs come after reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistent lobbying was a major motivator in dragging the United States into war with the intention of destabilizing Iran and bolstering Israel’s regional hegemony. Forty-five days after the war started, Iran appears to have thwarted these imperialist objectives, but the U.S. and Israel continue their devastating bombardment, which has already killed more than 3,000 people in Iran and more than 2,000 in Lebanon.
Sanders Mounts New Push to Block Sales of Over 20,000 Bombs to Israel
In the face of President Donald Trump’s erratic foreign policy and apparent insulation from the demands of the general public, a feeling of helplessness pervades the U.S. left. The horrors rage on, the imperialist mask is off, yet the robust antiwar movement that the moment requires is nowhere to be seen.
However, if a prevailing sense of impotence defines the current state of the movement, it was absent from Monday’s action in New York City. A diverse coalition of 18 organizations — perhaps an indication of a growing antiwar tent — including the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) are loud and clear about where the antiwar movement must be found: in the streets.
A few minutes after commencing, roughly 200 protesters sat in front of the building entrance,........