Congressional candidate Melat Kiros and state Sen. Julie Gonzales, who’s running for U.S. Senate, are hosting a rally with popular leftist political commentator Hasan Piker.
Kiros and Gonzales are part of a progressive new wave of the Democratic Party, with both aiming to unseat establishment Democrats. Kiros is challenging longtime incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, while Gonzales faces U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper.
“This rally brings together voices from across the progressive movement who are done waiting for change and ready to fight for it: Medicare for All, immigrant dignity, affordable housing, and an end to the big-money politics that's rigged the system against working families,” event organizers wrote in an email.
The rally, titled “Young, Bold and Unbought,” starts at 5 p.m. Sunday — and it’s now scheduled for the Ogden Theatre on Colfax Avenue after being moved twice from smaller venues.
“Democrats have been in power multiple times throughout the last few decades,” Kiros said on a livestream with Piker last month. “And (they) did nothing to address immigration reform that we actually need.”
Piker has nearly 3 million followers on the streaming platform Twitch. He’s caught the attention of Gen Z by streaming for eight hours almost daily, mostly talking about politics and internet culture.
Kiros, 29, previously joined Piker in a nearly hour-long conversation on his stream on May 9.
Part of their conversation was focused on Israel. Both Kiros and Piker have been outspoken about the U.S.-Israel relationship and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Following her appearance on the stream, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Colorado wrote an open letter to Kiros, criticizing her for what it called a lack of nuance.
“I was struck by how little nuance you brought to the topic of Israel compared to other parts of the interview. Throughout the conversation, you spoke thoughtfully about systems, context, and the dangers of simplistic worldviews,” the letter reads. “When discussing China, for example, you called for measured diplomacy and did not feel the need to reduce either the country or our relationship with it to its serious and ongoing human rights abuses. Yet when the subject turned to Israel, that instinct for complexity disappeared into moral certainty.”
The letter said Kiros spoke about Israel through a binary lens of power and oppression, rather than understanding history and trauma. It went on to state Kiros only mentioned the attacks on Oct. 7 as an “inevitable consequence of apartheid.”
Piker has been accused of antisemitism by various Jewish organizations and leaders, but maintains that he is only attacking the policies of Israel. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of more than 70,000 people; Israel invaded in response to the Oct. 7 attacks in which Hamas killed close to 1,200 Israelis and took 251 more hostage.
Piker recently was blocked from visiting the U.K. and has faced criticism for saying he “would vote for Hamas over Israel.”
Kiros also has been outspoken about Israel. In 2023, Kiros was fired from her job as a lawyer after she wrote an open letter in response to her firm and others signing a letter of support for Israel. In her response, she called Israel an apartheid state while rebuking antisemitism alongside Islamophobia.
Her letter stated that calls for the elimination of Israel are anti-Zionist, not antisemitic, and argued that conflating the two delegitimizes solutions that would require Israel to “reckon with its colonial role in Palestine.”
“To conflate such bigotry with the geo-political question of Israel’s legitimacy is one of the greatest travesties in this conflict,” she wrote.
Kiros has been endorsed by at least one anti-Zionist Jewish group, Jewish Voice For Peace Action.
More broadly, Sunday's rally is being touted as a space for a new wave of Democrats to convene. Joining Kiros and Gonzales are Justin Pearson and Donavan McKinney, two young progressives running for Congress in Tennessee and Michigan, respectively.
