Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held a "Students vs. Billionaires" town hall at Cornell University on Sunday — but before she took the stage, the Cornell University Young Democratic Socialists of America who hosted the event led a crowd of roughly 2,000 students in chanting "from the river to the sea" and declaring "long live the student intifada," setting the ideological tone for what the event would be and what coalition AOC continues to choose to associate with.
YDSA co-chair Zoe Reisman opened the pre-show remarks by telling the crowd: "Student activism is not dead. Long live student resistance, and long live the student intifada." YDSA president Mina Petrova then led the "from the river to the sea" chant while telling the assembled students that "Cornell is fundamentally a capitalist institution that prioritizes billionaires and profit over students and community and is controlled by CEO trustees that are profiting off of genocide and war." The crowd, by multiple accounts, responded enthusiastically. When AOC eventually took the stage, she did not address the chants or the remarks by her hosts. She joined them instead in accusing Cornell of censorship, telling the audience: "We have to respond to that first crackdown" on speech related to Palestine, union organizing, and other issues. "When we come out in numbers, they cannot take us all," she said.
"Cornell is fundamentally a capitalist institution that prioritizes billionaires and profit over students and community and is controlled by CEO trustees that are profiting off of genocide and war." — YDSA President Mina Petrova, before leading the crowd in anti-Israel chants at AOC's Cornell event
The event was framed as a midterm voter mobilization effort in a historically Democratic stronghold, but its content illustrated what the left flank of the Democratic Party has become heading into November: an ideological coalition in which anti-Israel chants, calls for student intifada, and accusations of genocide against a major American university's leadership are the warm-up act for a sitting U.S. congresswoman. AOC's campaign has not distanced itself from the chants, the remarks, or the choice of host. A Fox News poll conducted September 11-14 found that 55% of registered voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Socialists of America, with only three in ten viewing the organization positively — numbers that the Republican National Committee and GOP House candidates have been broadcasting aggressively in competitive districts ahead of November 3.
AOC's tour of Democratic strongholds is nominally about boosting turnout where it is already strong — an acknowledgment that the Democratic base in college towns and urban centers needs energizing rather than persuading. But the midterm map does not turn on what happens at Cornell. It turns on what moderate and independent voters in suburban districts see when they search for who Democratic candidates are associating with and what their allies are chanting at campaign events. The DSA's approval numbers among registered voters are not a secret to the consultants running competitive House campaigns. The chants from Sunday night will feature prominently in opposition research for weeks.
The phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" refers to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — encompassing the entirety of present-day Israel. Jewish organizations including the Anti-Defamation League consider the phrase antisemitic on the grounds that it implicitly calls for the elimination of the state of Israel. The phrase has been widely used at pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses since October 2023. "Intifada" is an Arabic term meaning uprising or shaking off; the word is associated in particular with two periods of Palestinian armed violence against Israeli civilians in the late 1980s and early 2000s. Cornell's administration has not publicly commented on Sunday's event.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chose to hold her midterm event at Cornell under the sponsorship of a chapter of an organization that opened it with calls for intifada and chants widely understood as calling for Israel's elimination. She made no apology for those chants. She joined her hosts in their grievances against Cornell's leadership. That is a choice — not a miscommunication, not a scheduling error, not something that happened before she arrived. She arrived, she saw the crowd, she heard what had been said, and she proceeded. Republican candidates across the country are counting on voters noticing.