Student organizers warming up about 2,000 people for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s "Students vs. Billionaires" event near Cornell led the crowd in the slogan, which the House condemned as antisemitic in 2024. Gov. Hochul dropped out of a joint appearance earlier in the day.
An Ithaca town hall meant to rally college students behind Democrats before the midterms opened on Sunday with student leaders leading the crowd in "from the river to the sea," shortly before Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the stage.
About 2,000 people packed the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center, with standing room only, for the congresswoman’s "Students vs. Billionaires" event. The event was co-hosted with the student activist group More Perfect University. Mina Petrova and Zoe Reisman, co-chairs of Cornell’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, warmed up the room. They led the anti-Israel chant and a cry of "long live the student intifada."
Petrova called Cornell a "fundamentally capitalist institution" run by trustees she accused of profiting off "genocide and war," a line that drew applause.
AOC takes aim at Cornell
Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign described the stop as part of a push to raise turnout in Democratic strongholds ahead of November. She has been touring upstate New York amid speculation about a future run for Senate or president. On stage, she accused Cornell of cracking down on student protesters.
She said the answer to any "first crackdown," whether over Palestine or workers trying to unionize, has to be an immediate response. "When we come out in numbers, they cannot take us all," she said.
A slogan Congress has condemned
The phrase refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Critics say it calls for Israel’s elimination, and the US House passed a resolution in 2024 condemning it as antisemitic by a wide margin. Ocasio-Cortez voted against that resolution.
Gov. Kathy Hochul had been scheduled to appear with Ocasio-Cortez in Ithaca earlier Sunday but pulled out. A spokesperson for the governor cited the nor’easter hitting New York City, although Hochul had no public events on her schedule that day.
Reporting in this story is based on coverage first published by the New York Post. The photograph is a stock file image, not a photograph of the event described.
