Stars and NY nominee detained blocking streets near UN

By The Conservative Desk (/journals/conservative-desk)

Police zip-tied Susan Sarandon’s hands and led her to a police bus on First Avenue near United Nations headquarters on Sept. 24, 2026. Officers did the same with Hannah Einbinder.

The NYPD reported 103 people detained.

The sit-in took place at First Avenue and 39th Street as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to address the General Assembly. Jewish Voice for Peace organized the action. Crowd estimates ranged from roughly 200 to more than 400. Demonstrators wore matching white T-shirts reading “Fund people not bombs.” Signs carried the messages “No war,” “Free Palestine,” “End the genocide,” and “Stop arming Israel.”

Protesters sat down in the roadway after police ordered dispersal. Officers on bicycles surrounded those who stayed. Arrests followed one by one. As detainees were placed on buses, the group chanted “Netanyahu go to hell.”

An NYPD spokesperson described the sequence in plain terms: “Members of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau issued … warnings, advising participants that they should leave. They continued to block the intersection. Multiple individuals who didn't comply were taken into custody.”

Sarandon is 79. Einbinder, 31, stars in Hacks. Also reported among those taken into custody were comedian Caleb Hearon, author Glennon Doyle, former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, New York City Council member Chi Ossé, and Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila-Chevalier. Cynthia Nixon and Elliot Page were among the public figures present at the protest. Video of the detentions circulated quickly. The New York Post put the total at 104. Times of India, citing Reuters, reported at least 30 arrested. Precise charges were not publicly detailed in available accounts, and reports used both “arrested” and “detained” for the same scene.

Avila-Chevalier, 32, is the Democratic nominee for New York’s 13th Congressional District after defeating five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the June primary. In a district that reliably elects Democrats, that victory all but assures her a seat in the next Congress. Her campaign treated the custody as a political statement. “Darializa was just arrested while peacefully protesting Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations,” a campaign statement said. It continued: “Our government has unlimited funds to arm a genocide against Palestinians but tells us there's nothing left to feed and house our own people. Stop arming Israel!”

Avila-Chevalier went further in her own words: “Netanyahu belongs at the Hague, not in the streets of New York City, and certainly not addressing the United Nations General Assembly.” A separate campaign statement declared: “As the Democratic Nominee for New York's 13th Congressional District, I refuse to allow a war criminal to roam the streets of our city unchallenged.”

Before seeking office, Avila-Chevalier helped launch the Columbia University Apartheid Divest boycott campaign. Prior Fox News Digital reporting found that CUAD posted “Death to America.” The woman now headed to Washington helped build that campus effort and then chose a blocked Manhattan intersection, and custody, as the stage for her argument against a U.S. ally.

Inside the hall, dozens of delegates walked out as Netanyahu began. He answered them directly: “If there are any other moral cowards who haven't yet left this hall, please do so now.” He defended Israel’s actions and said the country was also protecting other nations, while criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Piker, and those who left.

Demonstrators stated their case in moral and fiscal language. Manijeh Moradian said: “What's being done to Gaza, the obliteration of an entire society, in our name, with our tax dollars, this is our responsibility to speak out against, and Netanyahu has no right to use the platform of the United Nations to justify these atrocities.” Einbinder has said: “The cost of not speaking is higher, you know? There is a greater toll in not speaking, and you just gotta have your priorities straight.” Jewish Voice for Peace framed the sit-in as pressure on the United States to end arms support for Israel and as opposition to what the group calls genocide in Gaza.

That argument deserves a direct answer from the facts on the street. The First Amendment protects speech, assembly, and petition. It does not grant a right to hold a public roadway after a lawful dispersal order. Limited government depends on the opposite habit: clear rules, applied evenly, so that ordinary drivers, buses, emergency routes, and neighborhood commerce are not conscripted into someone else’s demonstration. New Yorkers who needed First Avenue that afternoon did not vote on Netanyahu’s speech. They met a planned obstruction and a police response required by the refusal to move.

Public safety is not an abstraction at an intersection beside the United Nations during a world leader’s address. Sovereignty includes the basic capacity of a city to keep streets open and of a nation to receive an ally without turning the approach into a stage set for custody photos. Taxpayers fund the officers who must peel protesters from the pavement one by one. They also fund the foreign policy the demonstrators reject. Calling U.S. support for Israel a blank check for “genocide,” as Avila-Chevalier’s campaign did without legal qualification, substitutes a verdict for a contested claim and then uses that verdict to justify blocking traffic in the commercial capital of the country.

Sarandon has a long record of protest detentions, including in 1982, 1999, 2018, and 2023. She has said agencies still tell people not to hire her and that she feels welcome among people internationally. Celebrity custody is not a new tactic. What is newer is the fusion of that tactic with a congressional nomination in a deep-blue seat, a campus divestment history tied to “Death to America” rhetoric, and a campaign message that treats arrest outside the United Nations as proof of fitness for the House.

Chi Ossé and Avila-Chevalier said they joined to oppose the violence and U.S. support for Israel. The police account does not turn on their motives. It turns on the roadway, the order, and the refusal.

Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly while 103 people sat in city custody for blocking the street outside.