Mamdani is stone-faced as the protesters call him a traitor and sellout.
https://x.com/petersterne/status/2107985730182009339
some chants
Anti-Mamdani chants at the protest:
“Zohran, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”
“700,000 dead. Mamdani, your hands are red!”
“Traitor, traitor, come on out! You sold all your people out!”
“Zohran, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide!”
From Nerdeen Kiswani, Founder of Within Our Lifetime
“MAYOR MAMDANI, TAKE A STAND! STOP THE SALE OF STOLEN LAND!”
Protesters confront Zohran Mamdani at an Israeli October 7th event, over the sale of Palestinian land through Israeli real estate events held right here in NYC.
Mamdani once introduced the Not On Our Dime Act to stop New York nonprofits from financing illegal Israeli settlements. Yet since becoming mayor, he has not publicly advanced a comparable initiative. When protesters confronted these land sales, he condemned their rhetoric rather than announcing concrete enforcement measures against the sales themselves.
In January, I outlined four existing legal avenues his administration could pursue, from consumer protection enforcement to investigations of potentially unlawful real estate marketing. None requires waiting for the state legislature.
https://x.com/NerdeenKiswani/status/2107988916703768990
Wow. A student organizer leading protests against Zohran Mamdani tonight reveals that she previously interned for him.
Now she’s leading chants against the very politician she once worked for, accusing him of prioritizing his own political advancement over the people and movements that helped bring him to power.
She delivers an ultimatum: The protests can stop when Mamdani stops the sale of stolen Palestinian land in NYC and abolishes the CUNY Board of Trustees, which advances Israel’s interests within the nation’s largest urban public university system.
full text
But she makes clear that she doesn’t expect him to deliver. In her view, Mamdani has become just another politician who makes promises to movements and then fails to meet their demands once in office.
What makes her testimony particularly significant is that she isn’t someone who opposed Mamdani from the beginning. She worked for him. She believed enough in his political project to participate in it. Now she’s publicly confronting him.
Her speech speaks to a broader frustration among people who placed their hopes in electoral politics as a vehicle for advancing Palestinian liberation. For some, the experience hasn’t strengthened their faith in political institutions. It has deepened their distrust.
https://x.com/NerdeenKiswani/status/2107997231416483892
Genuinely not as disappointed in Mamdani as I am at all those who refuse to hold elected officials feet to the fire.
He has absolutely no incentive to deliver on the demands of the Palestine movement if we don’t relentlessly make those demands. Meanwhile, Zionist organizations are doing exactly that, applying pressure and getting more and more of what they want, while people who claim to be on the left or support Palestine tell us our strategy should be to shut up.
full text
It’s absurd. You see that political pressure works. You see Zionist organizations using it to advance their interests. Yet somehow when Palestinians do that, in the context of a genocide no less, we’re accused of doing AIPAC’s job for them.
There is nothing Zionist organizations would like more than for the Palestine liberation movement to silence ourselves while politicians endlessly cater to their demands.
But what infuriates me even more is being lectured by Americans whose tax dollars are funding the weapons slaughtering my people. People who not only refuse to hold their own politicians accountable or do more to stop the genocide, but have the audacity to tell Palestinians to shut up about it.
You don’t get to sit comfortably in the country financing the slaughter of our people, refuse to hold your own politicians accountable, and then lecture us about how we’re allowed to resist it.