In East Palestine, Anti-Biden Protests Came from the Right and the Left

When Biden visited the small Ohio town, the pro-ceasefire left and the MAGA right had one thing in common.

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On a gray, late-winter afternoon in February, several dozen opponents of Israel’s war on Gaza stood along the two-lane street that bisects East Palestine, Ohio. Opposite them, a group of Trump supporters, sporting MAGA hats and “Let’s Go Brandon” placards, struggled to make sense of the scene: Who were these protestors flying Palestinian flags? And what were they doing at the site of last year’s Norfolk Southern train disaster?

The two groups had come to protest President Joe Biden’s February 16 stopover in East Palestine, a village of about 5,000 people near the Pennsylvania border. Together, they represented a major undercurrent in this year’s presidential election—an unlikely mixture between Trump conservatives and staunch progressives who, by all measures, share little more than a revulsion for Joe Biden. Their disdain for the incumbent President is rooted in political positions that are basically irreconcilable. But both represent a singular electoral threat to Democrats, who continue to cling to a candidate struggling to mobilize any voters beyond the party faithful. 

“Too little, too late,” read one placard held by a Trump supporter—a reference to the President’s decision to defer his visit for more than a year after the train disaster. The derailment and the “controlled burn” that followed had released toxic chemicals into the area’s air, land, and water, and left residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania exposed to long-term health risks. Instead of visiting the community immediately after the February 3, 2023, disaster, however, Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, where he pledged another half-billion dollars to the more than $50 billion he had already spent on Ukraine’s stalled war with Russia. 

“Billions for Israel and Ukraine, nothing for East Palestine,” read another placard, this one held by a woman wearing a keffiyeh. The reference wasn’t lost on fifty-one-year-old Tim Moore, who has lived his whole life in East Palestine. “Joe Biden is a year late,” Moore says. “If he would have showed up after the train derailment, I might have felt a little bit differently, but now it’s an election year. He’s out here trying to get votes. He doesn’t care about us residents.” 

Opponents of Biden’s stance on Gaza feel similarly unheard. Polls have consistently shown that most Americans favor an end to Israel’s assault, which has claimed nearly 30,000 Palestinian lives, almost half of them children. But Biden, by the time he made it to East Palestine, had already rushed billions of dollars in supplemental aid to Israel, some of it without Congressional approval, to fund Israel’s genocidal campaign. His administration had also vetoed three United Nations Security Council resolutions that would have called for a ceasefire.   

“The President is coming here today to make amends for missing them last year,” says Don Bryant, sixty-seven, an Ohio native and activist with the Cleveland chapter of Peace Action, a grassroots network pressing for “more responsible and just” U.S. foreign policy. “But we are here to ask the President to have a permanent ceasefire in Gaza right now.” 

For Bryant, the two issues are intertwined. “The Trump supporters and our side don’t want billions of dollars to go to wars,” Bryant adds. “We agree on that.” Still, as he joined the chants for a ceasefire, he kept a watchful eye on the group of Trump loyalists across the street.

“It’s not scary exactly, but we’re watching for altercations just in case,” Bryant says. “We know this is a Trump town—a lot of rural Ohio is—and they need to hear our message as well.”

Some residents of East Palestine and nearby Youngstown are already active in the Palestinian solidarity movement, mostly through their work with the Democratic Socialists of America and other progressive groups. “When the train derailment happened, lots of folks across Ohio and western Pennsylvania mobilized quickly to raise over $70,000 in mutual aid funds,” says C Stonebraker-Martinez, co-director of the Cleveland-based InterReligious Task Force on Central America and an outspoken critic of Biden’s stance on Gaza.

Like many of those protesting Biden’s visit, Stonebraker-Martinez sees the government’s failure to address citizens’ needs in East Palestine as part of a pattern of neglect, which has included the President’s failure to issue a major disaster declaration in the year since the derailment. In a letter to the President made public the day before his visit, residents said a disaster declaration would have taken a “presumptive approach” to addressing their symptoms—which have included coughing, wheezing, nausea, and vomiting—and provided access to treatment and compensation on par with that provided to U.S. soldiers exposed to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.   

Instead, East Palestine residents have had to contend with uncertainty over the disaster’s health impacts, including from contaminated soil and water. A November 2023 report by researchers at the University of Illinois, Purdue University, and Cleveland State University showed that about a third of residents in East Palestine and neighboring counties reported experiencing water insecurity. Bottled water use has gone up by 92 percent, and residents told me that they receive no financial assistance to cover the cost. Moore said his family uses only bottled water for drinking and cooking.    

The February 15 letter to Biden was signed by more than 200 residents and environmental groups, including River Valley Organizing (RVO), which works with communities in the Appalachian Ohio River Valley to advocate for “restorative and transformative solutions for public health and justice.” One RVO member who attended the February 16 protest told me that they agreed with calls for a Gaza ceasefire but preferred to keep their work with East Palestine disaster victims separate so they could stay focused on local needs.

Stonebraker-Martinez, who is originally from Youngstown, sees their activism in East Palestine as local, too, but also as part of a larger struggle. “The fact that Norfolk Southern is a funder of the Cop City project in Atlanta, [Georgia], where the company is based, reminds us that all struggles against militarism and capitalism are connected,” they told me. 

For Moore, who is a Trump supporter, the money trail is even more direct. “The people that invest in Norfolk Southern are Democrats, they’re Democratic supporters,” he says. “Joe Biden’s not gonna hold Norfolk Southern’s feet to the fire because those are his Democratic donors.” 

(Moore is right: The website Open Secrets shows that, so far this year, 89 percent of Congressional donations made by individuals with ties to Norfolk Southern went to Democrats). 

When asked what he thought of the chants calling for Biden to cut funding to Israel, Moore said: “Well, I agree with them. We have no business in the Middle East. We have enough problems here in the United States of America. We need to worry about our problems here first, and let the Middle East worry about the Middle East. I feel bad for everybody there, I don’t like to see war, but quite honestly, I’m an American first.”

For progressives intent on ending the carnage in Gaza, curbing U.S. aid to Israel may be the best they can hope for this election season. For now, Biden continues to repulse voters across the political spectrum. In Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary this week, more than 75,000 people voted “uncommitted” rather than pick Biden, citing his refusal to heed constituents’ calls for a Gaza ceasefire. In a key swing state where most polls show Trump leading Biden in the general election race, the president’s disastrous policies in the Middle East may be the defining factor in this November’s vote—even if the region is not top of mind in places like East Palestine.