More than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered at the Black Lives Matter Plaza in the hour hour before D.C. polling sites closed on Election Day to condemn presidential candidates for aiding or vowing to aid Israel in the war in Gaza.
At 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday about 100 demonstrators gathered at the intersection of Black Lives Matter Plaza and H Street just outside of the White House to hear speeches from pro-Palestinian student organizations like the DMV Palestinian Youth Movement, the protest’s organizer. Throughout the demonstration, speakers denounced GW’s handling of the pro-Palestinian encampment in University Yard and both Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect President Donald Trump for remaining “complicit” in the ongoing war in Gaza, supplying or indicating a commitment to supplying arms to Israel.
A GW student, who requested anonymity for fear of disciplinary repercussions, said the war in Gaza directly impacts them because they have family in Lebanon and Palestine. They said students cannot be “sheep” to the two-party system and that the student movement for Palestine must persist as their universities continue to use their tuition to fund the war in Gaza.
“I have family that is currently displaced in Lebanon right now, so these issues hit directly home to me,” the student said. “So it’s important to be out here to take a stand to show that we are not going to be sheep to the two party system that we are not going to be bullied into voting for genocide or fascism.”
Throughout the demonstration, protesters chanted “Free free Palestine” and “Revolution’s in the air, long live Shohada Square,” referring to the name student demonstrators gave University Yard during the pro-Palestinian encampment last spring.
“We will not rest until our schools divest fully from Israel, and from the Zionist occupation of Gaza,” the student said.
DMV PYM initially planned to hold the protest, announced on Instagram on Nov. 1, directly in front of the White House in Lafayette Square, but organizers moved the demonstration across the street due to an ongoing Christian demonstration in the space.
DMV pro-Palestinian activist groups like the DC Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression, the DC chapter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the DMV chapter of the People’s Power Assembly, Migrante USA and Pan-African Community Action attended and helped lead the event alongside DMV PYM.
At around 7:33 p.m. a speaker from DMV PYM said Democrats and Republicans are “united” in their support for imperialism and Zionism. They urged the crowd not to back administrations that fail to condemn Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.
“It has been under the Democratic Biden-Harris administration that over 20 billion of the American taxpayers’ dollars have been stolen to fund this genocide,” the speaker said. “We are here to say, ‘No more, there will be no more business as usual, no election as usual.’”
At about 7:52 p.m. a GW student spoke to the crowd about the disciplinary action students faced in the the University’s “kangaroo courts” — or mock courts that an involved party claims disregards the law — referring to the student conduct proceedings for alleged violations of University policies. The speaker said students were maced and beaten by Metropolitan Police Department officers when they cleared of the pro-Palestinian encampment, and said students must continue to advocate for the University to divest from Israel.
“When we exercise our intellectual freedom and build spaces for critical dialogue, the very values our universities claim to uphold, we are met with surveillance from the FBI,” the student said. “We are met with arbitrary punishments dealt by kangaroo courts our schools called student conduct hearings and physical brutality from the state and University Police departments.”
The student said the Biden-Harris administration has progressed the war in Gaza by supporting Israel, and told people in the crowd not to comply with the two-party system that forces people to choose between Trump and Harris.
“For years, liberals have branded their candidate as the lesser of two evils, but we are tired of voting for evil of any kind,” the student said. “And the nerve to call Kamala Harris the lesser evil while she co conspires in this accelerated genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the carpet bombardment of Lebanon.”
Around 8:10, a speaker from the DMV Palestinian Youth Movement said pro-Palestinian community members need to join together in condemning groups who offer false promises to marginalized groups, specifically LGBT groups and people of color, while continuing to fund a war that is leading to the deaths of Queer Palestinians.
“I don’t stand in allyship with my Palestinian comrades, I stand in solidarity because I recognize that our struggles are linked,” the speaker said. “They are interconnected with each other, and by fighting for Palestinian liberation and freedom, I am fighting for black liberation and freedom. By fighting for black liberation and freedom, I am fighting for queer liberation and freedom.”
At about 8:38 p.m., a pro-Trump demonstrator got in an altercation with a group of protesters, and one of the protesters fell to the ground and yelled “He pushed me.” Three Metropolitan Police Department officers escorted the demonstrator out of the area.
At about 8:45 p.m., organizers told demonstrators to disperse.
