In the largest single day of deliberately disruptive protest activity in the United States since at least 2020, activists responded to the call for a global “coordinated economic blockade to free Palestine” with at least 26 acts of civil disobedience or direct actions in 23 different cities from coast to coast, resulting in more than 270 arrests and a wide array of diversions, delays, and other interruptions of daily life and commerce.
- In Arlington, Virginia, dozens of protesters occupied the lobby and blocked the entrance to Lockheed Martin’s offices, resulting in three arrests.
- In Beacon, New York, protesters stood and sat in a line across the Hamilton Fish Newburgh-Beacon Bridge on I-84 at morning rush hour, causing a massive back-up on area roads. Police arrived on scene and arrested 15.
- Before dawn in Charlotte, North Carolina, activists dumped paint and screws in the driveway and placed u-locks on the parking-lot gates at a Northrop Grumman manufacturing facility. Later in the morning, a group of demonstrators came to the same facility to hold signs and chant at arriving workers.
- In Chicago in the morning, one group of activists used their bodies and a “sleeping dragon” to block an approach road to Chicago O’Hare International Airport for about 2 hours, and police arrested 40 of them.
- In Chicago in the afternoon, hundreds of marchers who’d initially rallied at Federal Plaza stopped to block the intersection of N La Salle Street and W Wacker Drive. The massive collection of police officers who’d attempted to block the march at the plaza responded to the roadblock by arresting at least 11.
- In Eugene, Oregon, more than 50 protesters stood in a line to block the I-5 interstate while dozens of others demonstrated on the nearby overpass at Harlow Rd. At least 52 protesters were arrested.
- In Fremont, California, hundreds of activists marched on the local Tesla plant. When they tore down a chain-link fence erected to block their approach, police in riot gear fired pepper balls at them, reportedly resulting in multiple protester injuries.
- In Oregon, in the forest near Grants Pass, activists conducting an ongoing tree sit against logging old-growth trees during a climate crisis marked the day by issuing a statement in solidarity with the A15 call to action.
- In Hillsboro, Oregon, near Portland, demonstrators blocked entrances to an Intel campus. Police on the scene didn’t make any arrests, but a counter-protester reportedly burned a Quran and an employee tried to drive their car through the picket line.
- In Kahului, Hawaii, dozens of demonstrators stood in a line with banners to block the road near Kahului Harbor, which hosts cruise ships as well as cargo freighters.
- In Kansas City, Missouri, activists from several organizations disrupted construction at the Kansas City National Security Campus, where Honeywell manufactures mechanical and electronic parts for nuclear weapons. Ten were arrested.
- In Maple Grove, Minnesota, protesters used a variety of tactics, including dabke dancing and a vehicle caravan, to delay shipments from the local Amazon distribution center for over two hours.
- In Miami, Florida, activists who lay in the roadway and locked down in a sleeping dragon on Biscayne Boulevard were met with a massive show of police force that reportedly included officers in riot gear, on motorcycles, in helicopters, operating drones, and on horseback; seven demonstrators were arrested.
- In Middletown, Connecticut, police arrested 10 protesters from a larger group that blocked roads to Pratt & Whitney’s local facility around morning rush hour.
- In Minneapolis, the Anti-Colonial Action Brigade broke windows and left spray-painted messages at a Wells Fargo Bank branch on E Franklin Avenue.
- In New York City on Sunday, April 14, a self-described “autonomous group of anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist anarchists” got a head start on the A15 call by vandalizing several Chase Bank branches in the financial district. Chase has been a regular target of demonstrations and direct actions in support of Palestinian liberation due to its investments in Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.
- In Oakland, California, a small group of protesters locked themselves down to concrete-filled barrels on I-880 at Embarcadero before dawn. Police spent hours trying to extract them and arrested at least seven.
- Later in the morning, hundreds more gathered on I-880 in Oakland near 7th Street and blocked the freeway for several hours. Police in riot gear approached the group and gave a dispersal order but did not attempt to enforce it by force, and the crowd dispersed on its own in the afternoon.
- Also in Oakland, activists disabled approximately 60 parking meters around Lake Merritt and left stickers on the meters explaining the connection to Palestine.
- In Philadelphia, scores of demonstrators blockaded the intersection at Schuylkill Avenue and 30th Street while another group slow-rolled the streets in a mock a funeral procession and a third group rallied and marched by City Hall. Police arrested 41 at the roadblock and another 27 from the caravan.
- In Providence, Rhode Island, people acting in solidarity with both the A15 call to action and the Stop Cop City movement knocked multiple multiple Bank of America ATMs out of commission “via super glue and yugi-oh cards.”
- In Saint Charles, Missouri, activists stood or sat with banners and signs to block entrances to Boeing Manufacturing Plant 598 at morning rush, resulting in eight arrests.
- In San Antonio, Texas, protesters blocked the road by Valero Energy’s offices. Police came to the scene, but we saw no reports of arrests.
- In San Francisco, an “autonomous group” of more than 60 activists blocked the soutbound lanes of the Golden Gate Bridge in the morning. California Highway Patrol closed the northbound lanes and arrested 26 of them.
- In Seattle, protesters blocked the road near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for over three hours, resulting in hundreds of flight delays and 46 arrests.
- In Tampa, Florida, protesters marched in the street and then blocked a downtown intersection around rush hour.
Those direct actions and acts of civil disobedience were accompanied by scores of other rallies, marches, and demonstrations with thousands of total participants, including ones in Chandler and Tucson, Arizona; Fresno, Long Beach, and Los Angeles (downtown and at USC), California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; New Haven, Connecticut (at Yale University); New York City, where another 48 people were arrested; Spokane, Washington; and Houston, Texas.
As of April 15, 2024, Crowd Counting Consortium has documented more than 7,500 pro-Palestine protest events in the U.S. since October 7, 2023, with a conservative estimate of 1.3 million total participants in the half of those events for which we have information on crowd size. A non-trivial share of those events come from nearly 100 daily or weekly demonstrations and vigils that activists have organized across the country over the past several months, and we continue to find out about new ones almost every week.
You can explore the data and find updated summary statistics on this ongoing movement with our interactive map and dashboard dedicated to it. U.S. protest events in support of Israel since October 7 are tracked on their own dashboard. If you have public information about an event we seem to have missed or a correction to a record we have, please consider using our anonymous online form to share that information with us.
[NOTE: This post has been edited since it was first published on April, 16, 2024, to include additional events and information as we learned of them.]