NEW YORK-UNS: On January 12, after repeated attempts, our broad coalition of community members and organizations in New York’s 6th Congressional District met with U.S. Representative Grace Meng about her refusal to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Since November, we had visited her Flushing office weekly, holding vigils to mourn the dead. We also repeatedly delivered a petition calling for a ceasefire and demanding that Meng join her colleagues, Jamaal Bowman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Nydia Velasquez from the New York delegation who have signed onto House Resolution 786 or make her own declaration. Requests for an in-person town hall have been ignored.
Our coalition consists of constituents and organizations in New York’s 6th Congressional District. During this long awaited meeting, we received a back-of-the-hand reception: a webinar link allowing a mere three individuals to speak while dozens more–including members of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Quaker faith groups –were not allowed to speak or be seen on video. Nearly 100 constituents joined the call only to be silenced, making a sham of our democratic process.
The diversity of our coalition captures the diversity of the district (organizations are listed below) but at no point did the Congresswoman recognize this. Instead, she solely cited her Jewish-Israeli constituents as justification for her position. Not once did she acknowledge her Jewish constituents calling on her to support a ceasefire in Gaza, or her Muslim, Palestinian, Arab and other constituents calling for the same.
We have called on Congresswoman Meng for months now–day after day, week after week–to join fellow members of the New York Delegation and dozens of others who have called for a ceasefire. 23,074 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7–as well as 330 civilians killed so far in the West Bank with the U.S. government as the primary funder and weapons supplier. Still, the Congresswoman conceded only that “I will try harder to express sympathy for what is happening in Gaza,” to which we interjected: “we are not asking for sympathy–we’re asking you to call for a ceasefire.”
When asked about prioritizing the interests of her Palestinian, Arab and Muslim constituents she deflected on her failure to do so by stating only, “something super local we’ve been fighting for is halal food from our schools to our pantries.” As we mourn the continued deaths of Palestinians and watch a genocide unfold on social media with the complicity of the U.S. government, we are outraged that Meng thinks tokenizing halal food access will make Palestinian, Arab and Muslim constituents feel represented and seen.
