On Monday afternoon, thousands of New Yorkers in keffiyehs, face masks, and light jackets gathered in Foley Square to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate arrested by federal immigration authorities on Saturday night and shipped to a Louisiana immigration detention center for the non-crime of being outspokenly pro-Palestinian on his former campus.
The New Yorkers we spoke to were angry and energized by the urgency of the moment and the cruelty of the situation. Nassim Zerriffa, attending the protest with his friend Catalina, told Hell Gate that as a middle school history teacher, he felt compelled to show up to the demonstration by the very things he tells his students in class.
"This is the imperialism boomerang, the canary in the coal mine, the slippery slope and all the metaphors you wanna use—if they can do this to anyone, they can do this to all of us," Zerriffa said. "Looking at what's happening now and listening to experts and the people who've lived through the fall of their democracies and the rise of authoritarian regimes, the advice is to fight it as early as possible."
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