From left to right: Layan Fuleihan, Macklemore, Shezza Abboushi Dallal, Susan Sarandon, Alana Hadid, Taher Dahleh, Grant Miner, and Manolo De Los Santos. Credit: Wyatt Souers
Watch the livestream of the event from BreakThrough News
Last night, hundreds of people packed into the New York Society for Ethical Culture in support of Mahmoud Khalil and the liberation of Palestine. The sold-out event was organized by The People’s Forum and featured speakers such as activist Alana Hadid, actress Susan Sarandon, hip hop artist Macklemore, UAW student union president Grant Miner, Palestinian Youth Movement organizer Taher Dahleh, attorney with Khalil’s legal team Shezza Abboushi Dallal, executive director of The People’s Forum Manolo De Los Santos, education director of The People’s Forum Layan Fuleihan, and executive director of the New York Society for Ethical Culture Dan Donohue. All ticket sales from the event went to the Middle East Children’s Alliance.
Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University and the lead negotiator during last year’s pro-Palestine student encampments. On March 8, he was abducted by ICE agents from his university-owned apartment and taken to a Louisiana detention facility, where he has been held ever since. Khalil’s arrest and detention reflect Columbia and the Trump’s administration’s crackdown on student leaders of last year’s encampment protests. Since his kidnapping earlier this month, waves of protests have sprung up across the country demanding Khalil’s release.
Khalil was a green card holder with permanent residency, and his case carries major ramifications for free speech and First Amendment rights. Khalil also serves as a test case for Trump to see how far he can push the boundaries of the legal system to carry out his right-wing billionaire agenda.
“We are witnessing a war on two fronts,” De Los Santos reminded the crowd. “In Palestine, Netanyahu and Trump are plotting to ethnically cleanse Gaza, displacing its people in order to profit from colonial greed.”
“But here at home,” De Los Santos continued, “Trump is moving to crush free speech, to subject the judicial system to his will, to roll back all the wins of the Civil Rights movement, to deport migrants, and to strongarm universities into punishing students like Mahmoud.”
But speakers remained defiant in the face of Trump’s crackdown.
Dallal gave an update on Khalil’s case and promised, “The legal fight continues on all fronts. It will continue until Mahmoud is brought back here, home, with his wife, and soon, his newborn child — and until his Constitutional rights are vindicated.”
Speakers at the event showed determination in the face of increased repression and stated that the movement for a free Palestine was only growing stronger and stronger.
“What is happening is not complicated. This is a genocide, this is ethnic cleansing, this is the crime of the century,” Hadid declared. “And yet we are the ones being silenced, we are the ones losing our jobs, losing our rights because we dare to speak the truth. But we refuse to be silent.”
Other speakers echoed Hadid’s conviction.
Miner, president of the UAW student workers’ union at Columbia who was fired and expelled by the university a day before contract negotiations for his role in the student protests, stated, “What is happening in Palestine is wrong, and the students who protested stand on the correct side of the most important moral issue of our time.”
Miner continued, “An injury to Mahmoud is an injury to all … We must let them know that for each person they take, thousands more will take their place.”
Speakers also urged attendees to stand strong in the face of these recent attacks, and that solidarity and unity only makes us stronger.
“Our history teaches us that the oppressed are never handed our freedom to us by the oppressor by asking politely,” Macklemore said. “As people, we are far more powerful than our governments want us to believe.”
By the end of the event, speakers had made their message clear: Trump’s tactics of arresting their leaders would ultimately fail, that the struggle for a free Palestine had already crossed a tipping point in which there was no turning back — Palestinian liberation was not only possible, but inevitable. What remains now is to build the movement to carry that task forward.
Fuleihan closed out the night by affirming, “As they carry out their war against our right to speak, our right to assemble, they will have to deal with us. We are in an epic battle, and we are not prepared to surrender.”
