New York’s Macy’s Parade saw pro-Palestinian activists disrupt corporate capitalist proceedings

Pro-Palestinian protesters targeted famous corporate capitalist extravaganza the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday 23 November, to show solidarity with the people in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.

Macy’s Parade: exposing the system as the problem

Seven Circles Alliance is a coalition of diverse groups that employ direct action to bring class consciousness to the climate movement and force political and economic system change through a decolonial lens.

Its objective is to unite labor unions, climate scientists, student bodies, and socialist organisations with the general public to instigate an international general strike to confront the elephant in the room, capitalism. To evolve past the market-based limitations we are facing, it says we must decentralise private capital and its henchmen, the corporations. Without the de-commodification of the ecological means of survival, conditions will continue to deteriorate exponentially.

Seven Circles Alliance says:

Through confronting the individualisation of systemic problems, and shifting the responsibility away from the individual and back to the system we will be able to unite all divided factions to rise up for system change and fight against decades of narrative engineering. It is not the fossil fuel companies, the banks, or the media, IT IS THE SYSTEM. They all work together. We do not have a climate problem, the climate is behaving exactly as the laws of physics said it would. We have an economic system problem.

So, in an urgent call to action, Seven Circles Alliance, a coalition of climate, social justice and political activists, disrupted the Macy’s Parade to bring attention to the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians:

#BREAKING: Protesters SHUT DOWN Macy's Parade route by GLUING THEMSELVES to the ground, demanding "Liberation for Palestine and Climate" blocking Sinclair Oil Corporation Dinosaur balloon.#Thanksgiving#MacysParade

Video by Ken Lopez [email protected] to license pic.twitter.com/ib2HM5QnYc

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) November 23, 2023

Multiple protesters jumped the barricades and glued themselves to the street #MacysParade #MacysThanksgivingDayParade #Protest pic.twitter.com/OIruwcyGEt

— T Wilkerson (@twilkerson) November 23, 2023

Seven Circles Alliance posted video of their protesters being arrested for blocking the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC. pic.twitter.com/1QNtcDcLXX

— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) November 23, 2023

Seven Circles says it demands that the US ceases its support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine and calls for both the US and Israel to recognize the ICC (International Criminal Court):

Palestine and the climate crisis

In August, Seven Circles disrupted Burning Man to draw attention to capitalism as the root cause of climate and ecological breakdown, and its inability to address the poly-crisis we are currently facing.

The group said in a statement:

A free Palestine and the liberation and decolonization of all people, everywhere is deeply linked with the climate movement. If the powers of the West are unabashedly supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing, it is crystal clear that they will not budge an inch in addressing climate breakdown and preventing societal collapse. Climate is a human rights issue, and what we are witnessing right now in Palestine is one of the greatest human rights issues of our time.

As expressed by human rights activist Ajamu Baraka, we believe that “The fight for climate and environmental justice is in fact a revolutionary project, requiring mass-global resistance and the expropriation of economic and political power of finance and corporate capital.” Confronting the issues of capitalism, along with colonialism and imperialism, head-on is urgently required by environmental and social justice groups, as well as everything in between.

Featured image via Oliya Scootercaster – screengrab