Chris Smalls

Chris Smalls’ Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University (Columbia)

Chris Smalls is a labor organizer who led chants promoting incitement and calling for Israel’s destruction as a speaker during anti-Israel protests in America and Canada in 2024. He has also spread hatred of Israel and America on social media.

Chris Smalls showed support for the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024.

On October 7, 2023, the day Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis, Smalls expressed [00:02:51] support for “free Palestine” at a protest in Berlin, Germany.

In April 2024, Smalls expressed support for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). He is also a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

On May 16, 2024, Smalls participated in “The People’s University Graduation,” an alternative graduation ceremony held by students from Columbia University (Columbia) in New York, New York.

Smalls’s activism and posts were during Israel’s war against Hamas, launched after terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023. The attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. For more information on the terror attacks, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.

Smalls was fired from Amazon, where he worked in their Staten Island, New York, warehouse, in March 2020. On April 20, 2021, he established the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), “A worker-led movement to put power back in the hands of Amazon employees and establish our right to negotiate for a better, safer, and more equitable workplace.”

As of June 2024, Smalls’s Twitter and Instagram accounts said he was the president of the ALU.

Also as of June 2024, Smalls’s Twitter said he was located in New Jersey.

Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia

On April 19, 2024, Smalls promoted incitement [00:00:01] while participating as a speaker at a teach-in at the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia. The encampment was also in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Smalls led [00:00:01] the chant: “If we don’t get it, shut it down! If we don’t get it, shut it down!”

Also during the teach-in, Smalls described [00:06:16] another protest he had participated in. He claimed [00:06:20] that the behavior of the police was “just like the Holocaust.”

Smalls was featured [00:00:01] in an April 19, 2024 video posted on Instagram taken at the Columbia encampment.

He said [00:00:03]: “...I'm here in solidarity, in support of the students that have been encamping the Columbia campus right here. In solidarity, because we see what happened a few days ago when the NYPD definitely caused a scene here that shook up the entire movement especially here in New York City.”

Smalls continued [00:00:24]: “We’ve seen something that our brothers and sisters in Palestine are going through. This is a glimpse of it here and they have set up an apartheid right here, where they are blocking people from coming in and onto campus to be in support of the students.”

Smalls concluded [00:00:38]: “So me, as an activist, as an organizer, it's only right that the community show up here and do as much as possible, whether it's be here in person or donate or bring supplies, it's our duty to speak up for the ones that can't be spoken up for.”

On April 17, 2024, Columbia students and anti-Israel activists set up a pro-Hamas “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university's main lawn. Many participants were arrested and the encampment featured multiple violent incidents, including taking over a campus building and taking a university worker hostage.

Activists protested Israel’s war against Hamas and demanded that Columbia “divest from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation…”

The action had reportedly been planned for months and was organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition. The encampment was also organized by Columbia’s banned pro-Hamas activist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the university chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Activists reportedly received training from National SJP and other anti-Israel organizations.

May 2024 - Calling for Israel’s Destruction

In May 2024, Smalls led [00:06:18] a chant calling for Israel’s destruction as he spoke at an anti-Israel encampment set up by University of British Columbia (UBC) students. UBC is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

As Smalls spoke at UBC’s anti-Israel encampment, he led [00:06:18] the chant: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!”

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a chant used [00:02:47] to call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state. In April 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the chant as antisemitic.

Hatred of Israel

On October 13, 2023, less than a week after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, Smalls tweeted: “...it’s Free Palestine

because we’re not Free until we’re all Free from the river to the Sea!

.”

On December 1, 2023, Smalls promoted on Twitter an “emergency protest” in New York titled: “STOP THE GENOCIDE - FREE PALESTINE NOW!” The protest was organized by the anti-Israel group Shut It Down For Palestine.

On May 3, 2024, Smalls promoted on Twitter a May 5, 2024 protest to take place at the University of Texas. The protest was organized by anti-Israel groups such as JVP and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).

On May 24, 2024, Smalls tweeted: “They fooled you into believing Genocide is Self Defense

.”

On June 2, 2024, Smalls posted a photo on his Instagram Stories that showed him wearing a shirt that read: “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.”

Hatred of America

On May 2, 2024, Smalls tweeted: “This is Amerikkka smfh [shaking my f**king head].” He was responding to a tweet from American senator Tom Cotton, who referred to the college encampments as “little Gazas,” calling them “disgusting cesspools of anti-Semitic hate…”

The term “Amerikkka” uses the initials of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as a way to demonize America as “fascist or racist.”

Featured Speaker at 2025 People’s Conference for Palestine

Chris Smalls was listed as a speaker at the 2025 People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Michigan.

The second People’s Conference for Palestine is scheduled to take place August 29-31, 2025, in Detroit, Michigan. The conference will unite participants with U.S.-based extremist organizations, designated terrorist affiliates and communist groups, with the goal of coordinating strategies for confronting Zionism and U.S. “imperialism.” The event was co-organized by several anti-American and anti-Israel organizations, primarily the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which drives the conference’s political agenda.

Speakers for the 2025 conference, the theme of which is “Gaza is the Compass,” include two terrorists released from Israeli prisons, as well as anti-Israel political figures Linda Sarsour, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and pro-Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil.

The 2024 People's Conference for Palestine brought together over 100 organizations and 3,000 participants, and openly declared its goal to dismantle American and Israeli power structures.

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.