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Dozens of anti-capitalist demonstrators gathered in Columbus Circle on 15 November outside of the New York City bureau offices of CNN to protest institutionalized racism and call for international solidarity in the struggles for justice.

Organized by The Peoples Power Assembly (PPA), the May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights and the Working Women’s Coalition, impetus for the rally was renewed in light of the recent terror attacks in Paris that left 132 dead.

PPA posted the following message on Facebook, urging context in the coming days and weeks as the world reels from the largest attack on French soil since World War II.

“We mourn for those who were killed and injured in Paris on Friday. But mourning is not enough. We must also remember that what happened in Paris is yet another terrible example of the bitter fruits that are the fallout from endless war, occupation, shock-and-awe bombings, and regime change.”

The Assembly criticized Western imperial wars in the Middle East--namely Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria--and the mounting humanitarian crisis in these countries resulting from decades of aggression and foreign meddling. Since the war in Syria began in 2011, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates some 10.8 million of Syria’s 22 million have been displaced by conflict and are “in need of humanitarian assistance.” Approximately 6.5 million Syrians are living today as internally displaced people, a more than 50 percent jump from 2013.

PPA urged a measured response to the tragedy in Paris, saying “Now is the time to remember how 9/11 was used as a pretext for war, racism and repression.”

Demonstrators set out from the CNN building to the office and television studios of Fox News on 6th Avenue, marching through midtown during rush hour and holiday shopping. While the organizers had obtained valid permits to stage the protest, NYPD officers followed and hemmed in the rally for the entire route, at times seeming to outnumber the demonstrators.

Nowhere was the connectivity of the various struggles for justice--black lives matter, immigrant and trans rights, anti-occupation and imperialism--more clear than in the chants at the march. Activists shared rounds of calling for justice for Akai Gurley and Michael Brown as well as for ending unfettered American military support to Israel’s occupation with the chant “not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes.”

At the gathering in front of Fox News, Stephen Durham, a member of the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) and organizer of the FSP in Harlem, spoke about the militarism of France in the Middle East. “State repression abroad feeds state repression at home,” Durham said, adding that France is one of the major sellers of arms to the Middle East and French methods of colonization, developed in Algeria during France’s 132 year occupation of the North African country, have been exported globally. “We need to talk about causes if we’re going to talk about solutions.”

Another speaker Josephine, who described herself as a “trans woman of color,” decried the brutality trans individuals experience in jail and the frequent complicity of prison guards. Noting the inequities in rates of arrest for people of color versus white people, Josephine said “Our families are struggling right now, they are mourning every time a life is taken and murdered.”

Josephine told police that they are trained professionally in order to “do your job right. Not for taking lives.”

PPA is organizing another rally for 22 November outside of the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, to call for justice for 12-year-old Tamir Rice exactly one year after he was fatally shot by a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio. The offending officer has not been charged.