Some 300 people gathered in Seward Park on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Tuesday evening to protest the Democratic Socialists of America, chanting things like “USA, USA” and “Hey ho, the DSA has got to go.”
The group EndJewHatred organized the “Unite Against Terror” gathering, which took place shortly before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attack on Friday, when Rosh Hashanah starts at night.
“We are definitely in DSA territory, but we’re standing loud and proud,” said Jayne Zirkle, director of communications and outreach for the Lawfare Project, which started EndJewHatred.
The protest took place across the street from the New York City headquarters of the DSA, an organization with which a growing number of successful Democratic candidates for Congress are affiliated. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is also connected to the group.
“Not only are we here to remember 9/11. We’re here to ensure that another 9/11 never happens again, and we’re not afraid to address that the reason 9/11 happened was because of radical Islamic terrorism,” Zirkle told JNS at the gathering.
“We’re here saying that, identifying the issue and calling out the political leaders who refuse to say that or embrace it,” she told JNS.
The DSA is a political organization, not a political party, whose priorities include ending capitalism, defunding the U.S. Defense Department and recognizing the “rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return, the right to resist military occupation and the right to self-determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital,” per its website.
It also calls for an end to “all military and economic aid to Israel” and to “prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza.”
Speakers at the demonstration included Michelle Ahdoot, director of programming and strategy at EndJewHatred, and Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard Divinity School alumnus who joined six other students in suing the university in 2024 for not addressing Jew-hatred and anti-Israel harassment after Oct. 7.
Kestenbaum, who now works at PragerU, reportedly reached a confidential settlement with Harvard in 2025.
“The DSA will tell you they’re the party of minorities, but according to their own internal survey 85% of them are white,” Kestenbaum told attendees from the podium. “They’re a bunch of rich white kids with daddy issues masquerading as socialists.”
Renee Collymore, a Democratic state representative and the head of the Black-Jewish Coalition in Brooklyn, also spoke from the podium. A black Christian, he noted some three dozen members of the anti-Zionist, Neturei Karta Chassidic group, protesting behind a police barricade near the main rally.
“I want to turn my attention to the Jews over here,” Collymore said, gesturing toward the counter-demonstrators. “Everybody knows that the Jews stick together. My question is what the hell are ya’ll doing?”
Collymore drew chuckles from the mostly-Jewish crowd. “Like we say in the black community, ‘Who raised you?’”
Ezra Greenspan, 16, of Teaneck, N.J., and Ori Solow, 16, who lives in New Jersey and is originally from Israel, co-founded an Instagram account called “Stop Mamdani.” Both spoke at the rally and encouraged participants to use their voices to speak out against Mamdani and the DSA.
Solow told JNS that as a Jewish teenager, he feels compelled to decry what he said are radical and extremist policies.
“It is our job, as Jewish people, as citizens of this country, to stand up and make sure that we are on the right side of this country,” he said.
Greenspan told JNS that Mamdani’s rhetoric is “endangering Jews” and “fanning the flames of antisemitism and hatred.”
Neturei Karta, who are Satmar and Satmar-aligned anti-Zionist Chassidim mostly from areas north of Manhattan like Kiryas Joel, are a ubiquitous presence at rallies that are not at all pro-Israel.
On Tuesday evening, they were joined by a handful of young, white, non-Chassidic adults wearing keffiyehs, who stood behind the Chassidim shouting “free Palestine.”
Collymore told JNS, before she addressed the crowd, that “we don’t support white supremacy.”
“Unfortunately, the DSA thinks that their own white supremacy is not oppressive, but it is,” she said. “They suffer from white savior syndrome. I’m here to stand against that, and to make sure they understand that they do not speak for black voices.”
“We want them to shut down their headquarters and go back wherever they came from, because they are causing disruptions in our beautiful city of New York,” she said.
“Do not let them scare you,” she told rally-goers of the DSA. “We must put our support together. The Jews and the black folks have to work together. This is the only way we are going to stop the DSA.”
