A left-wing activist organization run by Philadelphia public school teachers and administrators is planning a rally on Tuesday to celebrate the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, the Washington Examiner has learned.
The Racial Justice Organizing Committee, which began as a caucus within the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers before spinning off into an independent group, is partnering with a coalition of other left-wing organizations to stage a rally to celebrate the “rage and resistance” the organizations believe Hamas terrorists displayed during their terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7. The group counts at least nine Philadelphia public school teachers, an assistant principal, and one high-ranking district official among its ranks.
“October 7 marks two years since Palestinian resistance fighters bravely broke out of the prison that the zionist regime has turned Gaza into,” a post promoting the demonstration on the RJOC’s Instagram account says. “Now more than ever, we must reject all normalization with the zionist regime, uplift indigenous Palestinian resistance, and honor the martyrs.”
One promotional flyer for the rally features a bulldozer breaking through a fortified border fence, an apparent reference to Hamas’s use of bulldozers to breach the Israeli border in 2023.
Philly Educators for Palestine, a subgroup of the RJOC, is included on promotional flyers as one of the event’s sponsors. Other sponsors include the Philadelphia branch of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which openly supports the U.S.-designated terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Anakbayan-USA, a Filipino group that calls for “militant struggle.”
Core members of these groups include Philadelphia teachers Hannah Gann, Dana Carter, Keziah Ridgeway, Nick Bernardini, Shaw MacQueen, Adam Sanchez, Nick Palazzolo, Kristin Luebbert, as well as Ismael Jimenez, director of the social studies curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia, and Blair Downie, an assistant principal with the school district.
Ridgeway, who holds a leadership position at the RJOC and co-founded PEFP, was previously suspended from her teaching post for allegedly threatening Jewish parents.
The RJOC and its allies have been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at inserting pro-Palestinian material into Philadelphia’s public school classrooms, the Washington Examiner previously reported.
“It’s a disgrace that during one of the saddest days in Jewish history, these useful idiots are trying to destroy the fabric of American society because they are part of a cult,” Fawn Tenenbaum, a former teacher residing in central Philadelphia, told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t know what to say, but when I used to see [the] Westboro Baptist Church protest funerals, I felt the same way, but now I am even angrier. Stop listening to 20-somethings who have lived a shred of life and have some respect for history.”
The School District of Philadelphia did not respond to a request for comment.
