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In Union Square on Monday evening, Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke before a crowd of hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers, about the lessons of Passover.
"The lessons of hope overcoming fear, of solidarity being able to overcome isolation, and the knowledge at the end of the story, freedom is attained, and with it the sweetness of liberation," Mamdani said. "I know that at this moment freedom feels out of reach. Whether it be freedom from a suffocating cost of living crisis, freedom from a rising tide of antisemitism, or freedom from the brutality of ICE."
Organized by the leftist, anti-racist organizing group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, this seder wasn't just about gathering together, making speeches, and passing around the matzah—it was a protest against the pharaonic vision of the Trump administration, and specifically, the actions of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in terrorizing communities. As they held cups of wine (or grape juice), people sang Passover songs whose lyrics had been changed to be anti-ICE, and circled around a giant painted Passover plate placed on the ground that said "melt ICE" and "down with the police state" (in Yiddish).
As the seder continued, a breakaway group of over a dozen people marched to the nearby Chelsea office of the AI tech company Palantir, and in the lobby, held a demonstration calling out Palantir's outsized role in ICE's immigrant dragnet, developing technology for the agency to "use artificial intelligence and data mining to identify, track, and deport suspected noncitizens."
Current New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and New York state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who together control the City and state pensions funds which have holdings with Palantir, have questioned the company over its relationship with ICE. Meanwhile, City hospitals recently declined to renew a contract they had with Palantir to analyze data.
Inside the Palantir lobby, protesters, all wearing shirts with the message "sanctuary not surveillance," unfurled a banner reading "ICE Kidnaps, Palantir Profits. Let Our People Go."
"Shut down Palantir!" protestors screamed as the NYPD paraded them outside.
Back at Union Square, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a former JFREJ board member and current congressional candidate, connected the Passover story to the abductions of children by ICE, as well as the killings of children by the United States and Israel. (Under Lander, investments from the City's pension funds in Palantir skyrocketed, although his campaign told Gothamist that was because the value of the City's existing shares of Palantir grew more valuable; a spokesperson told Gothamist that if elected to Congress, Lander would work to prevent companies like Palantir from assisting Trump's deportation agenda.)
"Isn't it wrong to kill other people's children? Isn't it wrong to kill or abduct other people's children? These days especially, the derangement of killing or jailing children has grown far too wide," Lander said, reflecting on the ongoing genocide in Gaza, attacks on a pre-school at a synagogue, and the United States missile strike that killed hundreds of schoolchildren in Iran.
As the seder concluded, JFREJ members marched to stand outside the Palantir offices, where their fellow protesters were being handcuffed and removed by the NYPD, one by one.
According to the NYPD, 15 people were arrested.