Cries for peace in Palestine rang out from the grounds of the State Capitol building on Saturday as hundreds of people attended downtown’s first pro-Palestine rally. 

“You are the example for the people that are hiding in the shadows and refuse to admit that Palestinians deserve basic human rights,” Colorado Rep. Iman Jodeh said, standing in the bed of pickup truck on Lincoln Street with a megaphone and clinched fists.

Chants including “The people united will never be defeated,” and “Ceasefire” echoed through the charged center city air. 

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The attendees, following Jodeh and other Colorado Palestinian representatives, then began to march through the streets, holding signs for calling for peace.

The march on Saturday was organized by Colorado Palestine Coalition – one of their multiple rallies since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7. 

As of Friday, more than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas. 

More than 1,400 people – mostly civilians killed during the Hamas incursion – have died in Israel. 

“As of now, I have lost 47 people of my family within these bombings. 12 of them were in one evening. All of them were children,” one of the speakers at the rally said. “They were four years old, three years old, two weeks old. They were all women and children hiding together.”

“They’re all civilians. They’re all terrified. They all just want a ceasefire,” she continued.

Jodeh, who became the first Muslim and Palestinian-American to be elected to the Colorado General Assembly in 2020, was vocal about her support of the Palestinian people. Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Palestine in 1974.

“We’ve all gotten the text messages and the notes and the calls. ‘I hope you’re okay. How are you doing? Is your family okay? I know that you are strong,'” she said.

“Every single one of us needs to respond with ‘thank you. I hope you’re saying that in public.'”

Cheers erupted amongst the crowd.

“I want you to know that as your Palestinian legislator in that building,” Jodeh added. “You have an ally, you have a sister and you have a voice.”

One speaker said that this did not begin on Oct. 7, it began over 75 years ago with the “occupation, the ethnic cleansing, the displacement and the genocide of Palestinian people,” harkening to the 1948 Palestine war against the new state of Israel.  

“My grandma used to wear an American flag from time to time as a shawl wrapped around her,” the speaker noted. “But she used to wear it upside down. And when I asked her why she wears it upside down, she told me that our country will always be in distress as long as our people are suffering.”

The march came a week after Colorado elected officials, Jewish leaders and hundreds of Israel supporters rallied at the capitol building in a pro-Israel rally. 

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“These evil acts of terrorism are our greatest fears brought to life,” Gov. Jared Polis told the crowd. “We need to come together and take on hate and bias because we know that in Colorado, hate for Jews, Muslims, or Christians, for anyone, cannot find a home here in the state of Colorado.”

Colorado Palestine Coalition also teamed with the Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow for a peaceful, Jewish-led protest against violence in Palestine outside of Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette’s office on Thursday.

The group rallied to support the ceasefire bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo). 

“I have brought my chair to the space of where people do not look like us,” Jodeh said at the rally. “I am committed to being our voice in that building and making sure, again, that people fight for the basic human rights of all Coloradoans – and that that is reflective and extended to the Palestinians.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.