Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood silent as Cornell activists led roughly 2,000 people in the chant “from the river to the sea” at her Ithaca turnout event, a slogan the House already branded hateful.
Cornell University Young Democratic Socialists of America co-chairs Mina Petrova and Zoe Reisman warmed up a standing-room-only crowd at the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center on Sunday by leading the song and declaring “long live the student intifada.”
The event, billed “Students vs. Billionaires,” was hosted with the student activist group More Perfect University and framed by Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign as a push to boost Democratic turnout in strongholds ahead of the November midterms. The Bronx-Queens congresswoman did not distance herself from the chants.
The New York Post reported that Petrova and Reisman co-led the call-and-response while filling the downtown Ithaca hall. Ocasio-Cortez then took the stage and framed campus crackdowns as the real problem.
She tied Palestine protests to workplace union fights and other speech disputes, telling the room the left must push back first.
Ocasio-Cortez said, “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.”
“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 closed the thought with a numbers threat aimed at critics.
Ocasio-Cortez added, “When we come out in numbers, they cannot take us all.”
“When we come out in numbers, they cannot take us all.”
The U.S. House of Representatives in 2024 overwhelmingly ruled the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic and passed a resolution declaring it hateful. Ocasio-Cortez voted against that resolution.
The Daily Wire noted the same sequence: students chanted the line and “long live the student intifada,” Ocasio-Cortez offered no rebuke, and she had already opposed the House measure that labeled the slogan hateful. The outlet described the chant as recognized as a call for the total eradication of Israel as a Jewish state.
Critics of the motto point to its geographic sweep, the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, as a demand that leaves no room for a Jewish state. That reading is why the House acted. Ocasio-Cortez’s no vote and her silence in Ithaca put her on the other side of that judgment.
Her national profile has kept climbing even as fellow Democrats sometimes create distance, including cases where a Montana Democrat scrubbed her name from campaign materials.
Petrova did not hide the ideology. She told the crowd Cornell itself was the enemy.
Mina Petrova 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.”
“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 line drew applause. Reisman joined her in driving the “intifada” declaration. Ocasio-Cortez then spent her time attacking Cornell for what she called suppression of student protesters’ free speech rather than drawing any line on the content of the chants just delivered in her hall.
That pattern fits other recent episodes in which she has waved away scrutiny of hard-left allies, including moments when Democrats split over streamer Hasan Piker and she dismissed the concerns.
Gov. Kathy Hochul had been slated to appear with Ocasio-Cortez earlier Sunday in Ithaca. She backed out. A governor’s office spokesperson said the cancellation was due to the nor’easter hitting New York City. Hochul held no public events that day.
The congresswoman pressed ahead alone with the student crowd. Her campaign cast the trip as work to raise turnout in Democratic areas before November. Reporting also noted she is campaigning upstate to boost her image ahead of a potential run for president or U.S. Senate.
Polling already shows her rising on the national stage, with Ocasio-Cortez surging past Gavin Newsom in 2028 presidential odds in recent tracking.
Ocasio-Cortez first broke through by defeating Queens Democratic boss Joe Crowley in 2018 during the last midterm surge. She has operated since as an open Democratic Socialist willing to share stages with the party’s furthest-left campus networks.
That record includes joint demands that drew heavy pushback, such as when AOC and Pressley sought a federal lynching probe over deaths already ruled suicides, and public moments that produced bipartisan anger after she was caught grinning during a 9/11 reading of the names.
Sunday’s town hall fit the same lane: a packed room, radical student leadership setting the emotional frame, and the member of Congress treating institutional pushback, not the eliminationist slogan, as the offense that required a response.
No arrests, injuries, or formal university discipline were reported from the Ithaca session itself. The political fact remains simpler. A House-labeled antisemitic chant opened a Democratic turnout event, the member of Congress who voted against that House label stayed on stage, and the only crackdown she condemned was the one aimed at the protesters.
Voters can decide whether “Students vs. Billionaires” is really the banner, or whether the warm-up chant told the clearer story about the coalition she is building.