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Tag: protests

Vandals splash Columbia University president’s home with red paint as protests rage over ICE arrest of Mahmoud Khalil

Posted on by neversleep

Vandals targeted the home of Columbia University’s president, splashing the historic residence with red paint and scrawling the words “Free Them All,” as protests rage this week over ICE’s arrest of former protest ringleader Mahmoud Khalil, cops said.

The side of the building at 60 Morningside Drive appeared to have been pelted with red paint balloons — with the urgent message scrawled in black marker — when Columbia’s public safety officers spotted the damage around 12:50 a.m., police said.

Columbia’s current interim president, Katrina Armstrong, lives in the building, sources said.

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Rage Against Elon Musk Turns Tesla Into a Target

Posted on by neversleep

March 8, 2025

Tesla charging stations were set ablaze near Boston on Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight on Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.

The electric car company Tesla increasingly found itself in police blotters across the country this week, more than seven weeks after President Trump’s second inauguration swept Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, into the administration as a senior adviser to the president.

Mr. Musk, 53, is drawing increasing backlash for his sweeping cuts to federal agencies, a result of the newly formed cost-cutting initiative Mr. Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency.

During a demonstration on Saturday at a gleaming Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, protesters joined in chants of “Nobody voted for Elon Musk” and “Oligarchs out, democracy in.” One held a sign saying, “Send Musk to Mars Now!!” (Mr. Musk also owns SpaceX.)

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Nine arrested at New York Tesla dealership as anti-Musk protests break out

Posted on by neversleep

Nine people were arrested during a raucous demonstration outside a New York City Tesla dealership on Saturday, protesting owner Elon Musk’s role in sweeping cuts to the federal workforce at the behest of President Donald Trump.

The protest, which police said involved hundreds of people, was one of a wave of “Tesla Takedown” demonstrations staged across the country targeting billionaire Musk, who is spearheading the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Throngs of protesters also descended on the electric vehicle maker’s showrooms in Jacksonville, Florida, Tucson, Arizona, and other cities, blocking traffic, chanting and waving signs reading “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy,” and “No Dictators in the USA.”

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alleged assault of public safety officer

Posted on by neversleep

The Transport Workers Union condemned student protesters from Wednesday’s Barnard sit-in for allegedly injuring a public safety responder and Barnard for “consistently ignoring officers’ safety concerns.”

TWU’s statement, titled “TWU Blasts Barnard Protesters, Criticizes College,” described a 41-year-old officer, who is represented by TWU Local 264, being “pushed and shoved during the stampede” as protesters entered Milbank Hall at 4 p.m.

A New York Police Department spokesperson told Spectator Wednesday night that the department had a report on file for an assault at around 4:09 p.m. “in the vicinity of” 606 W. 120th Street—Milbank’s address. As of 4:43 p.m. Thursday, no arrests had been made for the assault, an NYPD spokesperson told Spectator.

“He was pinned by the rushing crowd against a beam separating the two doors,” the TWU wrote in its statement. “One protester lowered his shoulder and slammed into the worker like a linebacker.”

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Protesters stage sit-in outside Barnard dean’s office

Posted on by neversleep

February 26, 2025

Dozens of protesters staged a sit-in outside Barnard Dean Leslie Grinage’s office in Milbank Hall the afternoon of Wednesday calling for the “immediate reversal” of two student expulsions. The protesters dispersed at around 10:30 p.m. with a tentative agreement to meet with Grinage and Barnard President Laura Rosenbury on Thursday.

Protesters spent over six hours in Milbank, demanding that Grinage meet with them publicly and “accept the appeals of our expelled students.” They demanded that all Columbia and Barnard students involved in the sit-in receive amnesty and that the University not pursue disciplinary action for the sit-in.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest wrote in a Wednesday Instagram post that the protesters were demanding Barnard “reverse the expulsions” of two Barnard students whom CUAD wrote had been expelled for their participation in the Jan. 21 disruption of the class History of Modern Israel.

A flyer posted on the wall inside Milbank addressed to Grinage and Rosenbury listed four demands, including an “immediate reversal of the two Barnard students’ expulsions,” “amnesty for all students disciplined for pro-Palestine action or thought,” “a public meeting” with Rosenbury and Grinage, and “abolition of the corrupt Barnard disciplinary process and complete transparency” for disciplinary proceedings.

“Today, we are here to demand Dean Grinage accept the appeals of our expelled students, REINSTATING THEM IMMEDIATELY and ABOLISHING THE CARCERAL DISCIPLINARY SYSTEM,” CUAD’s statement on Instagram read.

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Barnard expels students for class disruption, pro-Palestinian protest

Posted on by neversleep

February 24, 2025

Barnard college, an affiliate of Columbia University in New York, reportedly expelled two students last week for disrupting a session of the class “History of Modern Israel.”

The Barnard students, both seniors in their last semester of undergraduate studies, banged on drums while chanting “free Palestine” and distributed flyers with the phrase “CRUSH ZIONISM” and a depiction of a boot over the Star of David, according to [news source].

A Columbia University student was also involved in the protest and has since been suspended and barred from campus, the university said in a press release last month.

The history course is being run by Columbia, and the disturbance occurred on the first day of spring semester classes for both schools, according to the student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

The pro-Palestinian coalition criticized the expulsions in a statement posted to X Sunday, calling Barnard’s decision “a serious escalation in the crackdown” against student activism. The group said in their post they plan to hold “a week of action” Monday through Thursday in response.

Columbia University became the epicenter of nationwide protests last spring, during which students built encampments and denounced Israel’s escalating response in its war against Hamas. In one day of demonstrations last April, more than 100 Columbia students were arrested on campus.

More than 50 students from Barnard have been suspended for political protest, according to Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

Found on mainstream news.

Protesters gather in lower Manhattan to denounce recent ICE activity in New York City

Posted on by neversleep

Protesters took to the streets of lower Manhattan to denounce and protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday evening.

On Feb. 13, a group of about 400 protesters marched from the ICE building at Federal Plaza near Foley Square to the ICE office at West Houston and Vertex Street in SoHo.

The protest came hours after Mayor Eric Adams met with President Donald Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan. The meeting resulted in the city reopening the ICE facility at the Rikers Island jail complex.

The group was seen carrying several banners and signs in English and Spanish, shouting, “Mayor Eric Adams must go; he doesn’t care about immigrant communities.” One protester, Jason Darlugo of Nicaragua, told the crowd while fighting back tears, “I came here to give my family a better chance at life.”

NYPD Officers on foot patrol, motorcycles, and bicycles kept up with the group and attempted to cut the group route off several times. Some protesters attempted to agitate the officers.

Six protesters were arrested and taken into police custody during the protest.

Found on mainstream news.

Thousands protest Donald Trump’s attempt to erase trans people from Stonewall Riots

Posted on by neversleep

Thousands of people gathered around near the Stonewall Monument in New York City’s Christopher Park this afternoon to protest the National Park Service (NPS) removing all mentions of transgender and queer people from the webpage for the monument commemorating the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

The NPS did this to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting any official recognition of transgender people within U.S. departments, agencies and workforces.

Many social media commenters were baffled when the NPS Service removed all mention of the initialism LGBTQ+ and replaced it with LGB, and removed all references to the transgender figures like Zazu Nova who is now being described on the website simply as a “black woman” instead of her previous designation as a “black transgender woman.”

The outrage from this action sparked a demonstration near the memorial scheduled for February 14 at 12 p.m. local time.

An estimated 1,000 protestors assembled at the Stonewall Monument at around noon with the crowd continuing to grow.

A quick history of the Stonewall Riots & its notable trans veterans

The Stonewall Riots were a series of protests in New York City from June 28 to July 3, 1969. At the time, homosexuality and gender nonconformity was illegal throughout the nation, and locations where LGBTQ+ people congregated were subjected to police raids.

One such meeting place was the Stonewall Inn, a gay tavern in Greenwich Village. During one of these raids, patrons decided they had enough of being harassed and criminalized by law enforcement and began to fight back sparking a six-day riot that became a turning point for LGBTQ+ rights and marked the start of the modern LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.

It is widely held believed that the two main participants of these riots were Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera, along with Zazu Nova who is believed by many to have thrown the legendary “first brick” — all three individuals are transgender women.

Found on mainstream news.

Hundreds protest NYU hospital for obeying Trump order in advance & ending trans care

Posted on by neversleep

NYU Langone Health CEO, and dean of NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Robert Grossman, made the decision to end care for trans youth without public notice, activists say, following Donald Trump’s January 28 executive order banning trans healthcare for youth. The parents of transgender youth got word out after their children’s appointments were canceled.

Within 36 hours, trans advocates and families – with help from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – helped to organize several hundred protestors outside of NYU Langone’s Tisch Hospital in Manhattan.

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15 Months of Protest Art for Gaza

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Admin note: only New York sections included

Over the last 15 months, artists have mobilized against Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza, which organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have determined to be consistent with genocide. After multiple failed attempts, Israel and Hamas agreed to a mutually negotiated ceasefire deal that went into effect on Sunday, January 19, with an initial phase stipulating a halt in Israeli attacks on Gaza for six weeks. The deal will reportedly allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip as Palestinians are permitted to return to their locales and Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners will be released in stages. Still fragile as it unfolds day by day, the US-backed ceasefire deal marks a precarious break in the onslaught of violence and destruction throughout Gaza. On Monday, January 27, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans began to return north.

In their international push for a permanent ceasefire, artists have developed visual languages to demand institutional divestments from Israel and call for an end to violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Many have either foregone or been denied life-changing career opportunities in their public advocacy for Palestine, underscoring the importance of community, solidarity, and artistic freedom in the broader culture sector.

Below are some of the most impactful moments of artistic protest for Gaza since October 2023.

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