Former Latino SF Supervisor joins Jewish people's protest to demand a stop to arming Israel

Hundreds of Jewish people protested at the L.A. office of U.S. Senator Adam Schiff and the San Francisco office of U.S. Senator Alex Padilla on Wednesday.

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) say they called for the two California senators to stop arming the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians. 

According to a press release from the organization, protesters included Rabbis, elders, students, parents and descendants of Holocaust survivors. They held sit-ins at Senator Schiff's office in L.A. and Senator Padilla's office in San Francisco, calling on their Senators to stop arming the Israeli military as it wages a genocide in Gaza. 

In San Francisco, former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors John Avalos joined the protestors alongside Cat Brooks of the Anti-Police Terror Project. Avalos is Mexican American/Chicano and was born in Wilmington, California.

They chanted "Let Gaza Live" and held banners that read "CA Jews Say: Stop Arming Israel" and "Never Again is Now." 

“I am here as a third-generation [Angeleno] alongside my fellow Jewish Californians to demand our representatives stop arming the Israeli military and enabling the famine in Gaza,” said actress Hannah Einbinder, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. “Adam Schiff is bought by warmongering AIPAC; he has taken upwards of $6 million from them, and betrayed his constituents in California.”

According to Open Secrets, a research group that tracks money in U.S. politics, Schiff received $311,663 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2024. 

"My father was an Auschwitz survivor and lost his entire family in the Holocaust,” said Joshua Hirsch, a member of JVP's Los Angeles chapter. “I cannot stand by as my Senators vote to send more weapons to the Israeli military as it commits genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. I am here calling on my Senators to listen to their constituents, not warmongering lobbyists like AIPAC."

This protest comes just days after the Israeli military bombed a hospital, killing medical professionals, rescue workers and five journalists. For months, the Israeli military has blocked the entrance of food and medical supplies, causing the starvation of millions of Palestinians in Gaza, in what the Secretary General of the U.N. called a "failure of humanity itself." 

The New York Times reported last week that a group of international organizations recognized by the U.N. determined that Gaza City and the surrounding area are officially suffering from famine. Israel’s government rejected the classification determined by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, known as the I.P.C., which classifies global hunger crises.