U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib spoke to a capacity crowd at the Palestinian American Community Center in Phoenix Saturday after Arizona State University officials canceled her scheduled speech Friday.

Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, is the first woman of Palestinian descent to serve in the U.S. Congress. She is considered one of four founding members of “the squad,” which is an informal group of eight Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Squad members are considered a new wave of Democrats, reportedly unaffected by lobbyist interest. Tlaib recently made headlines when she was censured for her speech on the current Gaza conflict.

Republican Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia introduced the successful resolution against Tlaib, accusing her of antisemitism, principally citing her use of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in her advocacy efforts.

Opponents of that phrase believe it calls for the destruction of Israel, while proponents of it say it’s more of a rallying cry and a call for ethnic inclusion.

On Saturday, Tlaib said although she’s been censured, she won’t stop talking. Tlaib started by denouncing military spending and the military-industrial complex in her remarks after claiming some U.S. representatives are in large-scale service to them.

“Our country consistently always wants to lean on wars,” she said. “It's the one budget that seems to get there with bipartisan support, and it doesn't even pass an audit. I think it's on the sixth audit that it's failed. The American people want to know — including our amazing veterans — who consistently say that all the budget increases do not help them get housing.”

According to USAFacts, a nonpartisan, nonprofit data initiative, the United States has sent more than $60 billion to Ukraine. In June, the Pentagon admitted to a $6 billion accounting error after overvaluing weapons. Last week, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry also released evidence of overvalued administrative supplies in Ukrainian account charges.

Tlaib later praised the protest movement in the Phoenix metropolitan area, referring to it as one of the nation’s greatest civic duties. She said that right came from the people, not presidents or members of Congress looking to invest in liberty.

“It's when folks organized and demanded it. Remember the power that you all have. The movement that you all have,” she said. “The fact of the matter is that they are trying to control it. And they didn't realize that there was so much shared humanity outside of Congress right now.”

Last week,  10 protesters were arrested after U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly’s staff trespassed protesters in their lobby in Phoenix. Protesters demanded a phone call from their rep, but the former astronaut declined to speak.

According to Tlaib, her majority-Black constituency in Detroit elected her to fight for rights in an ever-deteriorating battle for stakeholder relevancy for minority groups.

“They didn't send me because they were trying to make history as one of the first Muslim women or Palestinian,” she said. “They didn’t just want somebody to get corporate PAC money. That wasn't going to bail them out. They were tired of the pollution, and we're tired of the fact that consistently, over and over again, they saw their schools closing down in every neighborhood.”

Tlaib continued by comparing the censorship and decertification of Palestinian alliances and student groups across the nation, to that of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s struggle in the early 1960s. SNCC was a Black college students’ group that conducted sit-ins around America to protest the segregation of restaurants.

Their acceptance was not initially fully realized by the party. Members were outraged by occurrences at the 1964 Democratic National Convention when the party declined to include them and diversify the all-white Mississippi delegation.

ASU speaking event canceled

ASU canceled a scheduled speaking event for the U.S. congresswoman Friday, just hours before she was scheduled to speak. The event, advertised days in advance, still garnered a turnout that saw protesters spill into the streets.

ASU's media relations released a statement about the cancelation of Tlaib's appearance.

"The event featuring Congresswoman Tlaib was planned and produced by groups not affiliated with ASU and was organized outside of ASU policies and procedures.  Accordingly, that event will not take place today on the ASU Tempe campus," the statement read. 

Arizona lawmakers released a statement Thursday from state Representatives Michael Carbone (R-25), Alma Hernandez (D-20), Alexander Kolodin (R-3), and Consuelo Hernandez (D-21), denouncing Tlaib as extremist, antisemitic and “not welcome in the state of Arizona.”

The letter addressed ASU’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, another one of the event’s co-sponsors, calling the group “a radical anti-Israel organization.”  

In October, The Arizona Mirror reported that ASU paid upward of  $11,000 in event security fees as well as the salaries for ASU Police and Tempe Police Officers to host a right-wing event featuring an SPLC-designated white nationalist, Jared Taylor.