Boston police arrest protesters at Dewey Square calling for cease-fire in Gaza

Members of the activist group IfNotNow blocked the intersection of Summer Street and Atlantic Avenue Thursday morning as an act of civil disobedience to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The protesters stood and sat in the roadways at the busy downtown intersection near South Station for about 45 minutes during the early morning commute, halting traffic on both streets.

Police warned protesters about five minutes into the demonstration that officers would arrest those blocking the roads. The group said in a statement Thursday morning that police arrested more than 50 people.

Boston police said it could not yet confirm those numbers; the arrests occurred before 9 a.m. More than 200 people participated in the protest, according to organizers and observers.

Isaiah Newman, a spokesman for IfNotNow Boston, said the protest was planned to occur hours before President Biden's third State of the Union address.

"We think we cannot allow, on the morning of Biden's State of the Union, business as usual to continue while President Biden is continuing to support sending our tax dollars to fund massacre and genocide in Gaza," he said.

"We really think it important to stand by the message by disrupting business as usual in the heart of our city to really show that we find it really unacceptable that he has not used all leverage at his disposal to call for a cease-fire," Newman added, "especially when hundreds of thousands of voters around the country are really, in a myriad of ways, showing extreme displeasure with Biden for his policies on the war in Gaza."

Newman said the group, whose members locally and nationally describe themselves as "American Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system," plan to keep "protesting and continue advocating and making our voices heard as loudly as possible and in as many ways as we can."

Last November, protesters with IfNotNow briefly closed off access across the BU bridge during the early morning commute. A month later, its activists shut down the intersection of Congress and State streets during evening rush-hour.