Cornell University’s Young Democratic Socialists of America co-chairs led a crowd of roughly 2,000 people in chanting “from the river to the sea” before Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the stage Sunday.
The Cornell YDSA hosted the event under a banner AOC’s campaign labeled a “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall, framing the gathering as a fight against billionaire influence on campuses.
YDSA president Mina Petrova and co-chair Zoe Reisman opened the event by leading the anti-Israel slogan before Ocasio-Cortez appeared, with Reisman first declaring “long live the student intifada.”
“Student activism is not dead. Long live student resistance, and long live the student intifada,” Reisman told the crowd before the chant began.
Petrova used her time at the podium to directly attack Cornell’s institutional leadership, drawing applause from those assembled in the hall.
“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,” Petrova said.
Reisman added her own ideological framing, stating, “Here we stand as anti-imperialists and believe that nobody is disposable. We have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere.”
When Ocasio-Cortez took the stage, she offered no distance from her hosts and instead joined them in accusing Cornell of censorship against student voices.
“Whether it’s the issue about Palestine or many others, whether it’s about people trying to fire those who are forming a union in their workplace, whether it’s people trying to speak up about a number of different issues, we have to respond to that first crackdown,” she said.
“When we come out in numbers, they cannot take us all,” she added, rallying the crowd gathered for the Sunday event.
AOC’s campaign has framed the broader tour as an effort to boost Democratic voter turnout in party strongholds, though polling suggests the DSA alliance carries real political risk nationally.
A recent Fox News poll found that 55% of registered voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Socialists of America, while only three in ten view the organization positively.
The figures underscore a significant gap between the DSA’s growing influence within progressive Democratic circles and its standing with the broader American electorate.
Republican strategists have pointed to events like the Cornell town hall as evidence that Democrats are moving further left, a dynamic the GOP intends to exploit heading into the midterm cycle.
The Cornell YDSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the phrase “from the river to the sea” has been widely condemned by Jewish organizations as an antisemitic call for the elimination of Israel.
