Knock LA

On Thursday October 15, the Los Angeles chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP-LA) gathered outside Rep. Jimmy Gomez’s downtown office to protest his ties to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Attendees gathered on the sidewalk holding Palestine flags and signs reading, “Gomez loves AIPAC,” and “Gomez loves genocide.” Organizers highlighted that AIPAC has spent more than $2.6 million on Gomez’s political campaigns and career, including $374,000 in direct donations. 

“Jimmy Gomez is supposed to be accountable to his constituents, yet he has repeatedly refused to engage with Jewish Angelenos and allies who advocate for Palestinian human rights,” said JVP organizer Gio Kanagawa during the protest. “Despite having 4,700 JVP supporters in his district, Gomez has refused to sponsor the Block the Bombs Act to stop the flow of weapons facilitating genocide.” 

Besides Gomez’s political legacy of supporting Zionism and parroting the statement that Israel has a right to defend itself, Gomez is also facing sexual assault allegations from a female staffer. The allegations surfaced in August, followed by a statement from Gomez where he admitted he made “personal mistakes” involving cheating on his wife but claimed that all interactions with this staffer were consensual. Lawyers for the staffer denied these assertions from Gomez, stating that his actions were not consensual and that they expected the House Committee on Ethics to conduct a full investigation into the matter. 

Misconduct allegations, AIPAC donations, and support from the cryptocurrency sector all led to progressives doubting Gomez’s qualifications for representing California’s 34th congressional district. Gomez’s challenger, democratic socialist and anthropologist Angela Gonzales-Torres, also attended Thursday’s protest where she reiterated her call for his resignation. When asked by Knock LA why she made the decision to attend the protest, Gonzales-Torres’s answer was simple. 

“This is my number one reason for jumping into this race,” she said. “I asked my current representative to sign on to the Block the Bombs act, and when his office didn’t take us seriously, though we have nearly unseated him in every election cycle, I knew that I would have to do whatever I could.” 

When it came to her own platform and stance on Palestine, Gonzales-Torres provided another powerful yet succinct response. For her, the fight for Palestinian liberation is personal.

“I’m the daughter of a deportee,” she told Knock LA. “I’m ready to get to work. We have settler violence…that needs to be addressed. The blueprints that ICE is currently operating under were created in Gaza. I won’t forget to always bring it back to that.” 

The genocide in Gaza just entered its third year, with researchers and experts around the world estimating a death toll of at least 74,000 Palestinian civilians. This figure means that one out of every thirty people in Gaza has been killed by Israeli violence over the past three years, with Palestinian children encompassing at least 21,000 of those deaths. The Palestinian Health Ministry only records deaths occurring in hospitals or otherwise officially registered. This suggests that the true death toll is likely higher. Despite a ceasefire in October 2025, Israeli bombings and killings have continued. 

During the protest, Gonzales-Torres cited her day job working with incarcerated people as another reason for challenging Gomez.

“It is not a crime to protest apartheid,” she told the crowd. “It is not a crime to protest ICE. I will do everything that I can to continue to lend my voice to those that have been historically silenced.” 

Gonzales-Torres also mentioned that unseating Gomez would not just put a more progressive person in office but also provide a wakeup call to AIPAC. It would demonstrate that their strategy of dumping money into elections in an effort to elect pro-Israel candidates no longer works. 

“CD-34 was the only [California congressional] district that AIPAC targeted in the last election cycle in 2024,” she said to attendees. “To be able to unseat them this time is going to send such a powerful message.”

Also present at the protest was political activist Lilly Greenberg Call, former special assistant to the chief of staff at the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration. She was the first Jewish public official to resign from the administration over the genocide in Gaza. 

“I’ve seen how special interests, AIPAC, corporate interests, and the entire war lobby have such a chokehold on our foreign policy,” Greenberg Call told Knock LA in an interview. “Those of us who said we were going to lose the election over [Gaza] were not listened to. I was called antisemitic by senior White House staff, who were not Jewish.” 

Greenberg Call criticized the hypocrisy of Democrats like Rep. Gomez who share the same bedfellows as Trump. 

“We have Democrats like Jimmy Gomez who are taking money from the same people who fund Trump and the right, from the Israeli lobby, crypto, AI, the oil lobby, and polluters. They pretend that they’re fighting for their constituents, who are threatened by ICE and cannot afford gas, are being priced out of the city and can’t afford healthcare,” Greenberg Call told Knock LA. “It’s like, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”  

With the 2026 midterm elections approaching in Los Angeles, Thursday’s protest by JVP-LA showed that the age of cowardice from elected officials is over. Gonzales-Torres closed with a poignant reminder that those in positions of power have a moral duty to oppose genocide, and when they fail to meet this moment, the people reserve the right to take action. 

“We will never forget who stood with us when they had the opportunity and the responsibility to stand on the right side of history.” 

Editor’s Note: Knock LA does not make endorsements of political candidates. Articles written about political candidates should not be interpreted as an organizational endorsement.

Rosalind Jones (she/they) is a queer, Los Angeles-based writer and community organizer. She is a contributor for the online publication Knock LA, a founding member of the social justice organization Community Solidarity Project, and authors a Substack titled ‘Another World is Inevitable’. Rosalind holds a BA in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College and a certification in Creative Writing from the UCLA Extension.