Black-, Brown-, And Trans-Led NYC Organizations Hold Vigil Honoring Emam Ayatollah Ali Khamenei And Victims Of Amerikan Imperial Violence
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
BLACK-, BROWN-, AND TRANS-LED NYC ORGANIZATIONS HOLD VIGIL HONORING EMAM AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI AND VICTIMS OF AMERIKAN IMPERIAL VIOLENCE
NEW YORK, NEW YORK: MARCH 8, 2026: More than 250 anti-war demonstrators gathered last night in downtown Manhattan to commemorate the life and honor the martyrdom of Emam Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (رحمها الله ; May Allah bestow Mercy upon him). Speakers represented a broad coalition of anti-war groups and various Black, Muslim, Latino, and trans-led New York City-based youth and community organizations.
The vigil included candle-lighting and flowers placed at an altar honoring Emam Khamenei alongside Black and African martyrs of Amerikan imperial violence, including Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others who were martyred by colonial domination and racist police violence. The program included multiple speeches from various anti-imperialist organizations, a press conference with dozens of news agencies, an Emam to lead salat-e-maghreb (evening prayer) for attending Muslims, a community iftar for those fasting and observing the Holiest Month of Ramadan, and expressions of international solidarity with all resistance against the crimes of the Amerikan empire.
Organizers made clear that the work to defend Iranian and colonized peoples’ sovereignty will continue long after the vigil ended. This includes building political education programs and direct actions that materially connect the struggles waged by Iran and the Axis of Resistance against the Amerikan imperial system with the struggles unfolding in our own communities—the poor Black and brown hoods of deep Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.
“The forces responsible for endless war, sanctions, and regime-change operations abroad are the same forces that exploit us here through wage-theft, deed theft, rent-exploitation, inadequate public housing, landlord abuse, stop-and-frisk, over-policing, and countless other forms of racist systemic oppression,” said one organizer of the vigil. “The forces that call Khamenei a dictator for being defiant against colonialism are the same forces that label us thugs, gangsters, rapists, and monsters for standing up for our own people. Our task is to dispel propaganda directed at Iran and other colonized peoples, and recognize these struggles share the same enemies.”
Roughly thirty minutes before the start of the vigil, a small but rowdy group of counter-protesters began to assemble directly adjacent to the altar. A dignified demonstration was deliberately targeted by a group of white, zionist, and white-passing Iranian diaspora monarchists– a reactionary crowd aligned ideologically and politically with Amerikan imperialism, zionism, and pro-war MAGA nationalism. The zionist–MAGA–gusano tripartite gathered adjacent to us with the deliberate intention of violently disrupting the demonstration and provoking confrontation with vigil attendees and the media.
As Black speakers addressed the crowd, members of the counter-protest hurled racial slurs. At one point, a Black trans woman speaking in solidarity with Iran was interrupted with someone jeering “ignorant n*gger.” Their anti-Blackness and transphobia was on full display in the heart of what is supposed to be Amerika’s most ‘progressive’ city. The counter-protest demonstrated precisely the intertwined nature of white-supremacist MAGA nationalism and the anti-Iran diaspora community.
Later, as Muslim attendees paused to break their fast and fulfill salat-e-maghreb during the Holiest Month of Ramadan, counter-protesters continued to taunt, jeer, and distemper fasting Muslims by shouting Islamophobic insults, including yelling that the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم, Peace Be Upon Him) “f*cked little girls” (!استغفر الله; I seek Allah’s forgiveness!) Despite this open hostility, participants remained disciplined and steadfast— befitting of Allah’s (سبحانه وتعالى ; Glorious and Exalted is He!) commandments during the Holiest Month of Ramadan— continuing the prayer and maintaining the sanctity of the vigil, Alhamdulillah!
Their hostility did not remain verbal. Some provocateurs physically assaulted participants—punching one attendee in the face, spitting in the faces of others, attempting multiple times to snatch portraits of the Emam from the altar, knocking an elderly woman to the ground, and subsequently trampling over her body.
Passerbys watched as a group of predominantly white men repeatedly assaulted and taunted Black and Muslim vigil-attendees. “When I see those same people surrounding me today, calling me names and epithets, it is nothing new,” one organizer stated to the press. “When they call me a terrorist or a f*ggot because I refuse to conform, it is nothing new. This is NYC— their behavior, their actions, and their rhetoric are nothing I haven’t been through before.”
Black, Muslim, and Latino working-class Amerikan domestic-colonial subjects live parallel to the millions of working-class people in Iran who are currently gasping for relief from hundreds of illegally dropped zio-Amerikan missiles, countless human rights violations including nearly 50 years of sanctions and embargoes, and the criminal assassination of the rightful leader of their sovereign nation. And like Iranians— Black, Muslim, and Latino Amerikan colonial subjects have the moral and legal right (even under neo-colonial international law) to resist against their colonizer using physical force.
“The General Assembly… also reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
UN Charter, General Assembly Resolution 3070
Threats to the safety of organizers, attendees, our elders, or our children will be responded to swiftly. We affirm our own right— as well as the right of the Islamic Republic, Venezuela, Burkina Faso, Palestine, or any other colonized peoples— to defend ourselves from any colonial, anti-Black, and transphobic terrorism or intimidation. To be clear— we believe in street justice— any provocations to our safety will be met with swift and immediate physical repercussions.
Despite all efforts at intimidation, the event was an absolute success for the (previously defunct) Amerikan anti-war movement. The vile behavior of the counter-protestors exposed the Islamophobic and white supremacist zionist ideology that fuels war, sanctions and regime change operations against Iran. While vigil-attendees flew Palestinian, Iranian, and Congolese flags, counter-protestors flew Amerikan flags alongside flags of the zionist entity and flags of the western-backed puppet government-in-exile.
Yesterday, organizers demonstrated a clear line of unconditional solidarity between the liberation struggle within the belly of the beast to the struggle for sovereignty in Iran. The vigil proved that even within the borders of the empire, poor, working, and oppressed peoples are standing with the Islamic Republic, the Iranian people, and the global Axis of Resistance against Zionism and U.S.-led Western imperialism. Global resistance against Amerikan hegemony is necessary for our liberation.
We salute the steadfastness and achievements of the Islamic Republic in confronting the enemies of humanity and resisting imperial aggression. In standing firm against the zio-Amerikan war machine, the Iranian people will continue to defend not only their own sovereignty but the dignity of oppressed peoples everywhere. The vigil demonstrated that even within the heart of the Amerikan empire, Black, Muslim, Latino, and trans domestically-colonized peoples are building meaningful, militant, and unapologetic solidarity with the global struggle against zio-Amerikan imperial domination.
ENDORSING ORGANIZATIONS: The vigil was organized by a coalition of Black-, Muslim-, Latino- and trans-led community organizations based in New York City who are committed to opposing zio-Amerikan imperial war, sanctions, and colonial domination at home and abroad. These groups organize working-class communities across the city through food distributions, jail and court support, political education, protest mobilization, and solidarity efforts connecting local struggles to third-world liberation movements resisting Amerikan-led imperial violence.
These organizations include: Crown Heights Bites Back, Bronx Anti-War Coalition, Arm The Dollz, NYC Anti-Repression Group, Palaver Collective, Pro-Libertad Freedom Campaign, Sudanese Resistance Front, Bronx Mutual Aid, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party NYC (AAPRP-NYC), Black Alliance for Peace NY/NJ, The Al-Quds Committee Of New York, Workers World Party, International Action Center, Friends Of Swazi Freedom, Juventud Unida Por La Independencia (JUPI BX), Anti-Displacement NYC, The Committee To Free Nicolas Maduro And Cilia Flores, Diaspora Pa’lante Collective NY/NJ, and Students Together Against Institutional Racism.
