NYC groups hold vigil honoring Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other martyrs
Crown Heights Bites Back released the following statement on March 6, 2026.
By Aafia Diallo
More than 250 antiwar demonstrators gathered last night in downtown Manhattan to commemorate the life and honor the martyrdom of Emam Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Speakers represented a broad coalition of antiwar groups and various Black, Muslim, Latino and trans-led New York City-based youth and community organizations.
Vigil for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, New York City, March 5, 2026. (WW Photo: Sara Flounders)
The vigil included candles and flowers placed at an altar honoring Emam Khamenei alongside Black martyrs of Amerikan imperial violence, including Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The program included multiple speeches, a press conference with dozens of reporters, an Emam to lead salat-e-maghreb (evening prayer) for attending Muslims, a community iftar for those fasting in observance of Ramadan, and expressions of international solidarity with all resistance against the crimes of the Amerikan empire.
“The forces responsible for endless war, sanctions and regime-change operations abroad are the same forces that exploit us here through wage theft, rent exploitation, landlord abuse, stop-and-frisk, racist police murders and countless other forms of racist systemic oppression,” said one organizer of the vigil.
“The forces that call Khamenei a dictator for being defiant against colonialism are the same forces that label us thugs, gangsters, rapists and monsters for standing up for our own people. Our task is to dispel propaganda directed at Iran and other colonized peoples and recognize these struggles share the same enemies.”
Black, Muslim and Latino working-class Amerikan domestic colonial subjects live parallel to the millions of working-class people in Iran who are currently gasping for relief from hundreds of illegally dropped zio-Amerikan missiles, countless human rights violations, including nearly 50 years of sanctions and embargoes, and the criminal assassination of the rightful leader of their sovereign nation. And like Iranians, Black, Muslim, and Latino Amerikan colonial subjects have the moral and legal right to resist against their colonizer using force.
Despite all efforts at intimidation from a rowdy mixed crowd of exiled Iranian monarchists and known MAGA-zionist agitators, the event was an absolute success for the Amerikan antiwar movement. The vile behavior of the counterprotestors exposed the Islamophobic and white supremacist, zionist ideology that fuels war, sanctions and regime change operations against Iran.
Attendees demonstrated a clear line of unconditional solidarity from the liberation struggle within the belly of the beast to the struggle for sovereignty in Iran. The vigil proved that even within the borders of the empire, poor, working and oppressed peoples are standing with the Islamic Republic, the Iranian people and the global Axis of Resistance against zionism and U.S.-led western imperialism.
We salute the steadfastness and achievements of the Islamic Republic in confronting the enemies of humanity and resisting imperial aggression. The vigil proved that even within the heart of the Amerikan empire, Black, Muslim, Latino and trans domestically-colonized peoples are building meaningful, militant and unapologetic solidarity with the global struggle against zio-Amerikan imperial domination.
Endorsing organizations
The vigil was organized by a coalition of roughly twenty Black, Muslim, Latino and trans-led community organizations based in New York City who are committed to opposing zio-Amerikan imperial war, sanctions and colonial domination at home and abroad. These groups organize working-class communities across the city through food distributions, jail and court support, political education, protest mobilization and solidarity efforts connecting local struggles to third-world liberation movements resisting Amerikan-led imperial violence.
