More than 70 people joined together at the Bronx’s Fordham Plaza Friday afternoon to protest the war in Gaza — calling out politicians including U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson by name, claiming they are complicit in genocide in Palestine.
With a significant NYPD presence off to the side, shouts of “From the Bronx to Gaza, globalize the intifada” and “Free Palestine” rang out at the intersection of Third Avenue and East Fordham Road, as members of the Bronx Anti-War Coalition and other anti-war groups staged the public demonstration on May 3.
Many of the demonstrators were wearing medical scrubs and lab coats and held a banner reading “Healthcare Workers for Palestine.” They were soon joined by a group of Orthodox Jews, who stood quietly but held up signs reading “Torah demands all Palestine be returned to Palestinian sovereignty” and “Zionists ignited the fire both now and in the past.”
As people passed by on the busy street, some stopped to film on their phones and a couple cars honked seemingly in support as they drove by. At 4 p.m., about two hours after the group had assembled, they briefly blocked traffic on East Fordham Road.
The protest took place right outside Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx and included at least one student who participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment at the school’s Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan earlier this week.
Matthew Smith, a freshman physics major at Fordham, told the Bronx Times during the May 3 protest outside his university that college campuses should be “safe spaces to have these discussions,” not places where students fear suspension or arrest.
He nodded to the large-scale campus demonstrations in Manhattan that have garnered much of the recent attention — specifically at Columbia University, which has been widely credited as the leader of the now-nationwide Gaza solidarity encampments.
Smith said he was inspired by the “incredibly courageous students” at Columbia, New York University (NYU), City College of New York (CCNY), and others — and attributed their activism to his decision to protest at Lincoln Center this week and outside the Rose Hill campus in the Bronx on May 3.
“I was super emboldened to see these students put their bodies on the line and stand up for people in Palestine who are getting murdered right now,” he said. “We are making change here, it starts with us.”
While Columbia University journalists and students say there has been tension on campus since Oct. 7, 2023, it reached a boiling point around 4 a.m. on April 17 when hundreds of students launched a Gaza solidarity encampment on the school’s South Lawn — demanding the university financially divest from Israel. Since Hamas — a terrorist organization by U.S. State Department Designation — launched a surprise attack on Israel last fall, the nation’s government has countered with a military offensive that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinian people and pushed northern Gaza to the brink of famine, according to the Associated Press.
Columbia students and faculty have continued to demonstrate every day since they set up their encampment, even amid the NYPD removing and arresting students and “outside agitators.” In the latest standoff on April 30, Columbia students overtook Hamilton Hall on campus where things got heated — the Columbia Daily Spectator reporting people barricading doors and blocking entrances with wooden tables, chairs and zip-ties. Two days later, on May 2, the NYPD confirmed an officer “accidentally” fired a gun in Hamilton Hall that day, although the agency said only police personnel were present at the time of the gunfire and no injuries were reported.
Smith said he knows of people who were arrested at the Fordham Lincoln Center encampment earlier this week, and that there’s a lot of campus-wide “discontent with our current administration and how our current President Tania Tetlow decided to send in the NYPD to arrest her own students who were peacefully protesting.”
In a statement to the Fordham community reported by the Fordham Ram after the Lincoln Center campus demonstration, Fordham President Tetlow said the NYPD presence was about safety.
“This decision was not about parsing the difference between protected political speech and threats, nor was it about the Middle East,” Tetlow said. “This was only about the physical protection of the campus. It comes down to this: Fordham students have a right to feel safe and to finish their exams. Period.”
Alice Sturn-Sutter, who lives in Inwood, said at the Fordham Plaza protest on May 3 that after all the “courageous” actions of college students in Manhattan, “We have to come out for the Bronx.”
She told the Bronx Times that she is involved with an organization called Jewish Voice for Peace and that she attended this event because she is “sickened and heartbroken” over the conflict — and that many Jews feel the same.
Sturn-Sutter said she has become increasingly frustrated that “politicians don’t budge.” While most of the May 3 demonstration called out Gibson, Torres and Bronx Council Member Eric Dinowitz in chants and signs, she said that Jewish Voice for Peace has been rallying weekly at the district office of District 13 U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat.
Sturn-Sutter, who said she has always been politically active, said that the war is not in Israel’s best interest either, and that she is angered by the “horrific war crimes that my tax dollars are supporting.”
One of the demonstrators dressed in medical gear told the Bronx Times that “the struggle in the Bronx and Palestine is very similar.” Both places have suffered from inadequate health care and food access, unhealthy water, air pollution and a militarized police presence, she said.
The protester, who did not want to be named, said that this event was planned “in solidarity with Black and brown people” and to “keep momentum up” from recent events at college campuses throughout the city.
She expressed disappointment in Torres, whom she said has made “empty promises to his community” and is “neglecting the needs of the Bronx.”
When asked to define how the group defines the term “intifada” — a term that some say has violent connotations — she said it means “uprising, a fight for liberation and self-determination.”
Some protesters saw parallels in the Bronx’s struggle for a better quality of life.
“We [the Bronx and Palestine] have so much in common,” said a demonstrator with the Bronx Anti-War Coalition.
Using a microphone and small speaker, he compared Israeli forces to the NYPD and said, “The NYPD is trained by the Israeli occupation forces.”
“We are not free unless Palestine is free,” he said.
Smith, the Fordham freshman, said the student-led demonstrations are “on the right side of history.”
“Don’t stop showing up, especially to students after the semester’s over,” he said. “Keep organizing. The people in Gaza see us.”
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By Camille Botello & Emily Swanson
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