Artists Nan Goldin, Molly Crabapple and filmmaker Laura Poitras were among over 200 activists arrested at a Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) action outside the New York Stock Exchange.
According to reports in Hyperallergic, the sit-in on 14 October on Wall Street – targeting weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, the US arms manufacturer, for their part in Israel’s ongoing attacks against Gaza and Lebanon – drew around 500 protesters.
According to JVP, those arrested have been released and face charges of trespass. In footage shared on social media, activists can be seen wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the words, ‘Not In Our Name’, which they then fit over Wall Street’s Charging Bull (1989) and Fearless Girl (2017) bronzes. Banners reading ‘Gaza Bombed, Wall Street Booms’, ‘Stop Arming Israel’, and ‘Fund FEMA Not Genocide’ were unfurled across the street.
‘Every day we see a new, unspeakable Israeli war crime on our smartphones,’ Crabapple told Hyperallergic. ‘Israeli bombs flatten apartment buildings in Beirut and burn Palestinian patients alive in Gaza. With their genocidal campaign, Israel is destroying the people and places I love, with the enthusiastic help of the US government.’
At the time of writing, 42,979 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on the region since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, which killed 1,180.
