Throughout December, global action calling for a ceasefire in Gaza has taken many forms: At the beginning of the month, a group of more than 20 people undertook a five-day hunger strike outside the White House in Washington, DC; nearly two weeks later, a global strike for a ceasefire was called by Palestinian groups and promoted by Palestinian journalists Motaz Azaiza and Bisan Owda; then on December 12, CNN reported, the United Nations General Assembly voted to “demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in war-torn Gaza.” The momentum has intensified enough that President Joe Biden appeared to condemn Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing of Gaza” on the 12th, but within 24 hours a Biden representative was downplaying those comments.
The Biden administration seems poised to approve a $10 billion package in unconditional defense funding for Israel amid a slow increase in support for a Gaza ceasefire among US officials, support that has grown within the offices of the White House and among Congressional staffers. Actions and efforts like that early-December hunger strike have been part of the growth of the ceasefire movement.
Shortly after the hunger strike concluded, Teen Vogue spoke to New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and actor and activist Cynthia Nixon, who were both participants in that action. “At one level, my body is definitely in a state of relief,” Mamdani, 32, a longtime organizer for Palestinian rights who now represents Queens, told Teen Vogue. No stranger to this kind of tactic, in 2021 Mamdani was part of a hunger strike on behalf of striking taxi workers in New York City. “But my soul, my mind, I would say, is in a deep sense of sadness.”
Since the ceasefire hunger strike ended on December 4, more than a thousand Palestinians have died, per Gaza Health Ministry figures, which have risen from about 16,000 when the hunger strike began. Mamdani continued, “The issue that we hunger struck for continues to be relevant — if not far more urgent — than it even was over the course of our strike.”
“I feel the same way,” added Nixon. Mamdani and Nixon are connected through New York politics: Nixon ran for the governor’s seat in 2018, and spoke to us in 2021 after the ouster of her former opponent, the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, alongside then-Manhattan DA candidate Tahanie Aboushi. In a recent interview with The Cut, Nixon cited her relationship with Aboushi (who is Palestinian American) for helping her learn about the issue, as well as Mamdani, and her own son. Nixon went viral after her appearance on ABC’s The View last week, where she spoke passionately about how her son, who is Jewish and organizing for a ceasefire, has brought her and her wife into the fight.
Teen Vogue asked Mamdani and Nixon what’s next in their push for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and how it is they still have hope despite the heaviness of this moment.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Teen Vogue: In the wake of your hunger strike and the resumption of Israel’s war on Gaza, what are your reflections on the impact it had?
Zohran Mamdani: The ultimate goal of this hunger strike was to call on President Biden to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and the secondary goals of this hunger strike were to ensure that this demand continues to build — that we continue to build pressure, build the coalition, the sense of urgency around this. There are many in DC and in the White House who believe that the concern for Palestinian human rights is a concern that will fade and is a concern that is momentary.
Over the course of this strike, not only did we expand this coalition in the way that Cynthia mentioned, but we used the hunger strike as a springboard for Americans to take action. It's because of the strike that more than 25,000 Americans sent letters to their representatives, [and more] made phone calls for the same demand and fasted with us on Friday in solidarity. It spoke every single day to the fact that we are not going anywhere; we are only increasing our commitment to this fight.
It was important and necessary that that commitment be in a public setting, because so many reached out to us in letters, and [during] moments when they stopped to say they felt as if they were alone, even though they could see their sentiments reflected in poll after poll. When they turned on the TV or they listened to their politicians, they wouldn't see those sentiments be reflected. Finally, seeing a physical manifestation of a call for the valuation of all human life made them feel as if there is actually a pathway for the world that they want to see.
TV: We’ve seen repercussions, firings, doxxing, and harassment in the aftermath of October 7. Cynthia, your son was arrested while protesting, and Assemblymember Mamdani, you’ve been in the movement for a long time.
CN: My son, who is really the main entry point for my and my wife's involvement in this ceasefire movement, has been very active, not only going to protests, but speaking at protests, writing articles, and so many things. When he was arrested, he was intentionally arrested [as a form of civil disobedience]. It didn't just happen to him.
In terms of your broader question about personal risk, I feel it's so important to speak out because so many people are dying, and dying unnecessarily; so many civilians, the large majority of whom are children and women. You take a risk.
Everybody on all sides of this issue is very, very upset and wounded and scared and angry. Speaking for the group that hunger struck, we're trying very hard to walk a very careful line, and understand that everybody is hurting, but that civilian deaths are not going to bring any kind of peace or progress or succor. We can just say, again and again and again, we want a permanent ceasefire, to stop the killing of civilians but also to bring back safely, God willing, the hostages who remain prisoner. This [hunger strike] is not about “this side is right and this side is wrong.” Terrible attacks have happened on both sides and we must stop the killing taking so many lives every day.
ZH: Like Cynthia was saying, no matter the cost that we face, it pales in comparison to the cost that Palestinians are facing in this moment, through the continued support of our president for Israeli military action.
Yes, I've received death threats for calling for a ceasefire. Yes, we deprived ourselves of food over the course of five days. But at the end of each day, we would go home to a warm bed. For so many Palestinians, if they are lucky enough to survive a bombing campaign, they then go home to a physical structure that they used to call home but is now simply rubble, and they sleep in the mattress of that rubble. We have to take the courage to step forward and say that, in the words of so many of the labor representatives on Friday, “You cannot bomb your way to peace.”
We know that in this country, as we see an unprecedented number of Americans stand up and call out for the valuing of all human life and the necessity of extending that universal principle to Palestinians, that there is an immense attempt at policing and repressing any expression of solidarity with Palestinians. I say that as a legislator in the state of New York, where we've seen Jewish students suspended for saying the words “Free Palestine,” where we've seen universities like Columbia suspend student organizations that have participated in peaceful demonstrations for a ceasefire —
CN: Including Jewish organizations!
ZM: — and I think we have to stand up and be clear that the rise in antisemitism is horrific and deeply troubling, something that is real and inspires a real sense of fear among so many Jewish New Yorkers; and that it is unacceptable to tar expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people with the same characterization. It cheapens antisemitism.
CN: Like Zohran said, what we're doing, it's a tiny, tiny drop when you consider what's being faced in Gaza. But also, if this is a world now where I can't publicly say that the mass killing of civilians is wrong, I don't want to be in this world. How can that be an unacceptable thing to say?
What Zohran was saying about not having anywhere to go home to at the end of the day — there's not just mass killing from bombs; there's not just mass destruction of homes. I mean, if Israel keeps destroying buildings at the same rate that they have been, [soon] there will be no homes left in Gaza. But also, the urgency is even more compounded because of the lack of food and water and fuel. All the deaths we've seen, even though [the scale is] so massive, they're about to be dwarfed because so many Palestinians are on the brink of mass starvation. There's less and less of any kind of shelter, not only from bombs but from the elements.
TV: How do you plan to stay engaged on this issue? What’s next in your fight?
ZM: When we broke our fast on Friday evening, it was at the end of a vigil where we read the names of some of the Palestinians that have been killed over the past seven weeks — names and numbers that the president in the White House behind us doubted the truth of, a doubt that was incorrect and horrifically dangerous. After we read those names, we asked everyone in the crowd if they would commit to continue to take action, and every single person put their hand up, because they know that the necessity of calling for a ceasefire is greater than ever.
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Some action steps that I will tell people of specifically are: Go to ceasefiretoday.com; make sure that you have emailed your congress member; make sure that you join phone banks, that you go to protests, that you ensure your voice continues to be loud — if not even louder than it has ever been before. Do not consider one letter to be sufficient.
You can continue to reach out to your elected representatives, because what we've seen is that progress in the number of congresspeople who are calling for a ceasefire is directly related to the strength of protest movements and phone calls and letters that these congress members are on the receiving end of. We have to make sure that, as these days turn into weeks and weeks into months, we do not let our cry become any dimmer and that we continue to raise our voices.
CN: It just feels so awful and heavy and at times hopeless, but the thing that Zohran said, and that I keep uppermost in my mind, is any progress that really has been made, it has been made because people around the world — and, I think most importantly to our US government, in this country — have turned out en masse and continue to turn out en masse and protest, creatively protest, and it is that pressure and only that pressure that is moving the needle.
ZM: And that's what we heard from congress members that we met with over the course of that week, which is that the 60 members of Congress that have called for a ceasefire, they're calling for that ceasefire as a reflection of the grassroots pressure they're receiving. It's critical that we continue to increase that pressure, because every day that we don't get to a ceasefire is another day when Palestinian men and women and children will be killed.
Cynthia had mentioned that we had an art installation over the course of the week, where we invited people to draw a drop of blood and also a teardrop for Palestinians in the hopes of reflecting each Palestinian that had been killed, and echoing the demand [to recognize] that we are not numbers. That action was one that I had seen done in a Japanese protest for Palestinians; we saw it there and decided we would do it in DC. It speaks to the fact that every action gives birth to a new action. Our hunger strike, we want it to also serve as the inspiration of actions that are still to come, actions that many of us will be a part of. [We] know that in order for us to win the world where every civilian’s life is considered worthy, we have to continue to pass the baton among all of us to see that in every action we can take.
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TV: Any final thoughts you’d share with those who are following these events?
CN: Antisemitism is a terrifying thing with a terrifying history. My son, who brought me to this work, he's Jewish, and he centers himself very deeply in his Jewish identity. He is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and it's particularly painful for him to hear people who are speaking out on behalf of Palestinian life be labeled antisemitic. He wrote in an article that “to watch antisemitism tossed around like a political football by warmongers is particularly painful.”
I have to say, the flip side of that is how many of the really powerful, effective, creative protests in this country are Jewish-led protests. I think that is a really, really important thing to remember, and to remind people who want to label people speaking out for Palestinians as antisemitic, that my son says over and over again, “Never again means never again for everyone.”
ZM: There were a French couple at Lafayette Square who had come to see the White House and they stopped at our art installation. I offered them each a brush, I told them what the installation was about, and I asked if they would like to paint a drop of blood in honor of each of these lives, and they took the brush and they painted it. The man painted two drops close together, touching each other. Each of the other drops that had been painted thus far had been slightly separated. He looked at me and started to cry, and he said, “My last name is Cohen. All of us are brothers. Why is it that our politicians want us to be separate?”
It spoke to the fact that there are so many people that do not see themselves reflected in the rhetoric, in the decisions, of their politicians. The time has come for our president, for our congresspeople, to finally step up and reflect these sentiments — this valuing of human life — so that we do not have to see any more drops be drawn, so that we do not have to see any more Palestinians be killed.
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