Three protestors were arrested after they crashed the Easter Vigil Mass at Manhattan’s iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral, police said Sunday.
Protestors with the group XR NYC Palestine Solidarity held a banner reading “SILENCE = DEATH” before they were shoved away by church officials, video posted on X shows.
The protestors’ chants of ‘Free, free Palestine!’ echoed through the cathedral as they were shoved outside.
The group is calling for a ceasefire in the ongoing bloody conflict and for a “free and peaceful Palestine,” according to a statement released by organizers.
The protesters are affiliated Extinction Rebellion (XR), which has for years used flashy civil disobedience to call attention to the fight against climate change.
“War, occupation, and industrial pollution are poisoning the soil, air, and water in Gaza and all over the planet, destroying the earth’s capacity to sustain life, said Gregory Schwedock, an XR NYC Palestine Solidarity activist arrested inside the cathedral. “This destruction is called ‘Ecocide.’”
Schwedock was arrested along with two other men and charged with ‘disrupting a religious service’, a misdemeanor, according to police.
Protests calling for a ceasefire in Palestine have become a routine presence across the city since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since then, according to officials in a Saturday report from the Associated Press.
With Thomas Tracy
