In the spring of 2024, many members of Congress were practically tripping over themselves to condemn and silence antiwar student protesters who were building encampments on their college campuses, calling for their schools to divest from Israel and its genocide of Palestinians. On Columbia University’s campus, the heart of the encampment movement, was alumna Darializa Avila Chevalier. She wore a kuffiyeh, was arrested alongside the students, and supported them as they faced eviction and expulsion — and derision from the highest lawmakers in the country. Now, Darializa is about to become a member of Congress.

On Tuesday night, New York City experienced a political earthquake — and Palestine was at the center. In addition to Darializa’s upset of an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)–backed establishment candidate, congressional candidate Claire Valdez surged to victory on a platform that embraced calls for Palestinian freedom. Like Darializa, Claire’s face was already familiar to many in the Palestinian rights movement in New York. She regularly joined protests demanding an arms embargo, she was an early and vocal backer of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) NYC Break the Bonds campaign to prevent the reinvestment of city money into Israel bonds, and she was a champion of the Not On Our Dime Act to stop New York tax dollars from subsidizing Israeli war crimes.

Pro-Palestine candidates won up and down the ballot. This election showed us three things. First, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory was not a fluke — it was a harbinger of a new political era. Second, the grassroots organizing of membership and base-building progressive groups can overcome big money. And finally, unapologetic support for Palestinian freedom can be a popular core pillar of the progressive movement and a winning campaign message.

When Mamdani won last year, many pundits tried to spin the victory as a one-off stroke of luck: he was charming, he was good on social media, Andrew Cuomo was an easy villain to defeat. But this week’s elections make it clear: New Yorkers want representatives who will fight for us. We want elected officials who demonstrate moral consistency, whether it is on protecting immigrants, ensuring tenants can stay in their homes, or halting the flow of US money and weapons that are fueling genocide and apartheid abroad.

JVP Action–endorsed candidates also won big in the state legislature. Aber Kawas, a longtime community organizer and leader in the Palestinian liberation movement, won her primary for state senate and will become the first Palestinian American elected to office in New York. David Orkin, an anti-Zionist Jewish New Yorker and immigrant rights attorney (and longtime JVP member), unseated a conservative Democratic incumbent. And champions for Palestinian rights Samantha Kattan and assembly member Diana Moreno easily won their primaries as well.

And in NY-10, progressive grassroots membership organizations like Jews for Racial and Economic Justice supported Brad Lander in his overwhelming defeat of Rep. Dan Goldman, which was a resounding rejection of AIPAC’s toxic politics and a punishment of Goldman for his vocal support for Israel’s ongoing genocide and apartheid. Lander ran and won in a deeply Jewish district on a platform that promised support for the Block the Bombs Act and a call for an end to Israel’s genocide.

Leftist and progressive movement groups were key in these races. Justice Democrats recruited, launched, and backed Darializa’s campaign. New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) launched Claire’s race and led a historic, powerhouse field program for both Darializa and Claire. JVP Action, the South Asian community organization DRUM Beats, and the United Auto Workers were key validators in many of these campaigns. Collectively, we poured volunteer energy into the races, knocking hundreds of thousands of doors to talk with voters directly about the issues that matter most to them. We did this because we had worked with these candidates for years and knew they would be strong partners in government if we could get them elected.

The Democratic establishment has done everything in its power to ignore and erase the fact that the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters want to end US complicity in Israel’s genocide. Voters are saying clearly that they are sick and tired of seeing the United States support the massacre of Palestinians and then hearing their own representatives defend it. They understand that the Democratic candidates who are willing to defy party leadership in order to speak up for Palestinian freedom are the same candidates who will refuse to compromise on other values as well. Support for Palestinian freedom is now a key pillar in the broader progressive agenda.

This isn’t limited to New York City. Our candidates are winning across the country. Candidates like Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a pastor who spoke out against apartheid and genocide from his pulpit and is now the Democratic nominee in Texas’s District 30; State Representative Chris Rabb, who called for a ceasefire and to stop arming Israel early on in the genocide, and is now the Democratic nominee for Congress in Pennsylvania’s District 3; and Dr Adam Hamawy, who traveled to Gaza during the genocide to save lives in Rafah and is now the Democratic nominee for Congress in New Jersey’s District 12. And we’re working toward another win in Congress for Melat Kiros in Denver on June 30, a lawyer who was fired after refusing to take down an article she wrote defending the antiwar student protesters at Columbia.

Our movements are proving that proud and unapologetic support for Palestinian freedom can be not only a moral stance but a path to electoral victory.

Democratic voters want candidates who will put forward clear and bold positions: tax the rich, abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and free Palestine. Many people enraged by politicians who answer to AIPAC and corporate megadonors are now energized by a path where we can change who is in power to better reflect the will of a multiracial, working-class base. Our movements are growing our political power — and we should raise the bar of what we believe is possible.