Pro-Palestinian protesters temporarily halted Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City by gluing themselves to the pavement of the route.
The protesters disrupted the 97th annual parade at Sixth Avenue and West 45th Street around 10am on Thursday.
About 30 protesters jumped over barricades and appeared to glue themselves onto Sixth Avenue, WABC reported.
A protester on a float belonging to a New England Native American tribe hoisted a Palestinian flag. The group on the ground unraveled a massive banner reading, ‘Free Palestine’.
Other demonstrators held banners that read, ‘Liberation for Palestine and planet’, and ‘Genocide then, genocide now’.
The white jumpsuit-clad protesters doused each other and the street in a red liquid representing blood.
They forced the parade to continue forward around them. Some members of the crowd booed the white jumpsuit-clad protesters, upset that they brought in the politics of the Israel-Hamas war into the popular family-friendly event.
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Protesters refused to leave until they were removed by New York Police Department officers. How many demonstrators were taken into custody was not immediately known.
The parade has been a tradition in the Big Apple since it began in 1927.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden called into the parade to express thanks.
‘We have to remind ourselves how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on the face of the earth,’ said the president.
‘Today is about coming together, giving thanks for this country we call home. And thanks to all the firefighters, police officers, first responders and our troops, some of whom are stationed abroad.’
The parade was otherwise a cheerful event under sunny skies. Larger-than-life balloons of Snoopy and SpongeBob SquarePants were marched through Manhattan and Grammy Award-winning singer Cher performed.
It is not the first time the Thanksgiving parade has been subject to a protest.
In 2014, seven people protesting a court’s decision to not indict a cop in the fatal shooting of a teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. However, they did not disrupt the parade flow.
On Thursday, a large group of pro-Palestine activists also descended on the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade, chanting, ‘From Turtle Island to Palestine, genocide is a crime’, and, ‘Detroit stands with Gaza’.
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