Mina Petrova stepped to the microphone first.
She is the co-chair of Cornell University's Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, and on Sunday evening at the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center, she had a room of roughly 2,000 people waiting for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Petrova told the crowd that Cornell was "a capitalist institution that prioritizes billionaires and profit over students and community."
Then her co-chair, Zoe Reisman, took the mic. "Student activism is not dead," Reisman said. "Long live student resistance, and long live the student intifada."
Then they led the room in chanting "from the river to the sea."
AOC was backstage.
The event was called "Students vs. Billionaires" — three stops across upstate New York, Buffalo to Syracuse to Ithaca. More than 2,000 people attended the Ithaca stop. An estimated 85 percent were college-age.
"From the river to the sea" appears in Hamas's 2017 revised charter, which calls for "the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea." The phrase refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — land that includes the State of Israel. In 2024, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution formally declaring the phrase antisemitic.
AOC voted against that resolution.
She knew who her warm-up acts were. She chose Petrova and Reisman. She co-organized the event with Cornell's Young Democratic Socialists. When she finally took the stage — after the chanting had already filled the room — she said: "Whether it's the issue about Palestine or many others... we have to respond to that first crackdown." And: "When we come out in numbers, they cannot take us all."
She said nothing about the chants.
Governor Kathy Hochul had been scheduled to appear alongside Ocasio-Cortez. She canceled. Cited weather.
It was a Sunday in September in upstate New York.
Earlier on the tour, Maxwell Bowman, co-chair of Buffalo's DSA chapter, had appeared alongside AOC and told reporters that "the Democratic Party in New York State has been a corporate party serving money interests for a very long time." Ocasio-Cortez had quietly rejoined the Democratic Socialists of America after a seven-year absence. The DSA co-hosted every stop.
Diane Russell, an Ithaca resident of 30 years, told a reporter she liked AOC's energy and the overwhelmingly young crowd. Cornell junior Matthew Knudsen talked about restoring judicial independence at the university. Ithaca College senior Camilla Mischka said the event reminded students that politicians are "supposed to be working for us."
None of them mentioned the chant.
This was an official Democratic midterm voter registration rally, headlined by a sitting U.S. congresswoman, with her name on the banner and her team at the door. The warm-up act declared "long live the student intifada" before she walked on stage. She said nothing about the chants.
The tour had already generated 2028 presidential speculation. She told reporters she is "leaving all my options open."
Zoe Reisman told the crowd: "Long live student resistance, and long live the student intifada."
