#campus occupations

[tumorhead]

Student Uprisings for Palestine 2024 Practical Info & Resources Saw this on Twitter and wanted to share them here. Download them before they get taken down! Cal Poly Humbolt Student Occupation Report Back from April 22 2024 - Click Here Worker-Student Action Committees of France May 1968 - Learn from history - Click Here Learn SALUTE:

Best Practices Posters - Click Here for all of them (Red Clarion: communist essays and analyses)

De-Arrest Primer - Click Here for all of it

The Do-It Yourself Occupation Guide - Click here for all of it

Do with this what you will. Free Palestine!

[emdroid]

RUHA BENJAMIN AND PRINCETON FACULTY WITNESSES SPEAK OUT ON CLIO HALL SIT-IN (excerpted)

That last paragraph is powerful.

[readytoescalate]

[agentfascinateur]

In an era of equal rights, some chose to go backwards...

Ahead of the vote, a group of 25 Senate Republicans introduced legislation — the No Official Palestine Entry (NOPE) Act — that would prevent US funding from going to the United Nations and other organizations that grant the Palestinians “any status, rights, or privileges beyond observer status.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sam Levin at The Guardian:

Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old American activist killed while protesting in the occupied West Bank, was remembered by friends and former professors as a dedicated organizer who felt a strong moral obligation to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians. “I begged her not to go, but she had this deep conviction that she wanted to participate in the tradition of bearing witness to the oppression of people and their dignified resilience,” said Aria Fani, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, which Eygi attended. “She fought injustice truly wherever it was.” Fani, who had become close with Eygi over the last year, spoke to the Guardian on Friday afternoon, hours after news of her death sparked international outrage. Eygi was volunteering with the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement when Israeli soldiers fatally shot her, according to Palestinian officials and two witnesses who spoke to the Associated Press. Two doctors told the AP she was shot in the head. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said it was investigating a report that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity”, and the White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and called for an inquiry.

Eygi, who is also a Turkish citizen and leaves behind her husband, graduated from UW earlier this year with a major in psychology and minor in Middle Eastern languages and culture, Fani said. She walked the stage with a large “Free Palestine” flag during the ceremony, Fani said.

The professor said the two met when he was giving a guest lecture in a course on feminist cinema of the Middle East and he spoke of his own experience protesting in the West Bank in 2013. “I had no idea she would then be inspired to take on a similar experience,” he said, recounting how she reached out to him for advice as she prepared to join the International Solidarity Movement. “I tried to discourage her, but from a very weak position, since I’d already done it myself. She was very, very principled in her activism in this short life that she lived.” In her final academic year, she devoted significant time “researching and speaking to Palestinians and talking about their historical trauma”, Fani said. “She was incredibly well-informed of what life was like in the West Bank. She was not a naive traveler. This experience was the culmination of all her years of activism.”

Eygi was an organizer with the Popular University for Gaza Liberated Zone on UW’s campus, one of dozens of pro-Palestinian encampments established during protests in the spring, he said. “She was an instrumental part of … protesting the university’s ties to Boeing and Israel and spearheading negotiations with the UW administration,” Fani said. “It mattered to her so much. I’d see her sometimes after she’d only slept for an hour or two. I’d tell her to take a nap. And she’d say: ‘Nope, I have other things to do.’ She dedicated so much, and managed to graduate on top of it, which is just astounding.”

[...] Eygi’s killing drew immediate comparisons to the 2003 killing of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American, also from Washington state, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the military’s destruction of homes in Rafah with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Turkish-American Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was killed in the Occupied West Bank by the IDF (IOF) terrorists while protesting Israel Apartheid State’s occupation of Palestine.

[chaithetics]

WRITE TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVES! WRITE TO YOUR POLITICIANS!

AMERICANS PLEASE WRITE TO YOUR SENATOR! YOUR VICE PRESIDENT! YOUR PRESIDENT! The US House has passed a bill to expand the definition of anti-semitism which has many issues for being vague and including the criticism of Israel as anti-semitic.

It will now go to the Senate and then Genocide Joe to sign in. This is clearly a weaponised response against your students who are protesting across your nation in solidarity and to support Palestine. WRITE TO GENOCIDE JOE! WRITE TO KAMALA! WRITE TO YOUR SENATORS!

Antisemitism and anti-zionism are not the same. It is more than possible to criticise Israel without being antisemitic and the reality is most anti-zionists aren't antisemitic. Many Jewish people out there are anti-zionists, who understandably do not want their heritage and religion to be used as justification for colonisation and genocide.

If you follow/know me for fics and it would incentivise you to do this, I would even write a fic for you if you wrote. Just please use your voice and time however you can to support our Palestinian family.

[timaeuslover001]

so its okay for marxists and muslims to occupy colleges and then TRASH THEM completley, in the USA and then get released in

less than 24 hrs later but homeless people get arrested and sentenced and fORCED to be in jail?

its OKAY for students to block, harass and be violent against pro Palestine "protesters" and relieve NO CRIMINAL CHARGES but a women block planned parenthood and she gets 3 years?!?!??!?

I think it's BEYOND evidence on who this protected classes are in America are.....

[news4dzhozhar]

[sarnianightlive]

uoft’s admin was really like we know you want to know what we talked about with the peoples circle for palestine but unfortunately we will not be disclosing the details 🩷 uoft is home to hundreds of voices and opinions 🩷 as if the average bear wouldn’t be able to figure out that they are not divesting from israel meric gertler and sandy welsh please kill yourselves. quickly.

[tumorhead]

Write up on the student encampments for Gaza

[dreadfutures]

I am really so grateful to have grown up where I grew up and gone to college where I went to college 🙏 getting to know people from all over the world and all walks of life and emphasizing our common humanity and the importance of solidarity against empire and the establishment

[econoenigma]

Can we step to that? Yeah!

History of Step

What is Stepping?

What is Step?

Stepping or step dancing is “a percussive dance in which the participant’s body is used to produce complex rhythms and sounds through a mixture of footsteps, spoken word, and hand-claps,” writes the African American Registry.

Step has its origins in Africa, as dancing has been a large part of traditional African culture for centuries.

Calling Step a "bizarre silent dance without music" has to be one of the wilder antiblack racist descriptions I've ever heard of stepping lmao. Anyway if you see the video, it's step!!! They're stepping!! It's a Black American form of dance!!

[agentfascinateur]

Brilliant minds think alike on Gaza

... both Jewish and non-Jewish students, inspired by anti-Apartheid protests in Beinecke Plaza decades earlier, had gathered for a week-long sit-in to demand that Yale divest the portion of its endowment invested in the stocks of military contractors, which make the weapons Israel is currently using in its war with Hamas in Gaza. The students were protesting under the Occupy Beinecke coalition, which includes Yale Jews for Ceasefire, a group of Jewish students dedicated to fighting for a ceasefire in Gaza as well as sustainable peace and equality within the region.

The lesson will be to reject the abuses of force; the abuses of authority; to embrace respect for people's differences and hopefully, a retreat from politicizing or pitting against each other what are ultimately universal values of peace and the betterment of all for all, and get to enjoy them instead. One hopes. There is an awful lot of pain and hatred trying to be implanted at the moment, and it's going to take a superhuman effort to forgive after the madness passes. We will have to rally around the positives and focus towards the future.

🕊️

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

While Buckley's view prevailed on April 30, over the years, Columbia came to embrace the protests — and political activism — as an important part of its legacy. In the aftermath of the police raid, the university sided with the protestors, "canceling the gym and severing ties with a weapons-research institute affiliated with the Defense Department." Kirk resigned as president within a year.  It also resulted in structural reforms at Columbia that were designed to give students and faculty a more formal role in setting university policy. In 1969, the University Senate, a 100-person body consisting mostly of faculty and students, was created by referendum. Today, the University Statutes stipulate that a president may only consider summoning the NYPD (or other "external authorities") to end a demonstration if it "poses a clear and present danger to persons, property, or the substantial functioning of any division of the University." Even then, the University Statutes require "consultation with a majority of a panel established by the University Senate’s Executive Committee" before the president takes action.  [...]

Columbia University in 2024

On April 18, 2024, Columbia President Minouche Shafik wrote the NYPD regarding a group of students who were occupying the campus' south lawn. The day before, the students had established a "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" in protest of Israel's operations in Gaza — and Columbia's investments in companies allegedly profiting from the war. The Israeli assault on Gaza, launched in response to Hamas' October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, has killed thousands of civilians and created a humanitarian crisis. Shafik accused the Columbia students, whose tuition costs $66,000, of trespassing on their own campus. She requested "the NYPD’s help to remove these individuals." Shafik claimed the students were not authorized to protest on the lawn and posed a "clear and present danger." (A policy limiting protests to designated areas was only put in place in February.)

The NYPD responded to the request by descending on the University and arresting 108 students. Some students were restrained in zip ties for several hours and transported to a local police precinct before being released. Shafik also said that all students "participating in the encampment" have been "suspended" for an indefinite period.

According to the NYPD, the protest was entirely non-violent. "To put this in perspective, the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner," NYPD Chief John Chell said.  Antisemitism exists on and off the Columbia campus. But the mass arrests conflated peaceful pro-Palestinian protests with prejudice and hatred toward Jewish people. Shafik claimed she "complied with the requirements of Section 444 of the University Statutes." Section 444 requires "consultation" with the University Senate Executive Committee. While Shafik informed the committee of her decision, it is unclear if a genuine consultation occurred. "The executive committee did not approve the presence of NYPD on campus," Jeanine D’Armiento, chair of the Committee, told the Columbia Spectator. 

Like in 1968, shortly before Shafik called in the NYPD, she faced substantial political pressure from the right. On April 17, 2024, the day before the NYPD raid, Shafik testified for three hours before the Republican-controlled House Committee on Education. The hearing, Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism, was modeled after prior hearings that forced the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania to resign. (Shafik missed the earlier hearing because she was traveling internationally.)

Throughout last week's hearing, Shafik and other representatives of Columbia touted their "work with external investigators and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify and discipline students who breach policy." Shafik assured members of the committee that Columbia students "are getting the message that violations of our policies will have consequences."  During the hearing, Congressman Rick Allen (R-GA) told Shakik that, in the Bible, God is "real clear" that "if you bless Israel, I will bless you" and "if you curse Israel, I will curse you." Allen asked Shakik if she wanted "Columbia University to be cursed by God?"  "Definitely not," Shafik replied. 

[...] Shafik's actions, however, appear to have backfired. In the wake of mass arrests, the protests on the south lawn have continued and inspired others to protest in solidarity across the globe. The Columbia protesters are now calling not only for divestment but, in an echo of the 1968 protests, "an end to Columbia expansion into West Harlem."

Students at Columbia University launched Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the campus's south lawn to protest the Israel Apartheid State's occupation of Palestine and the university's investments in companies alleged to be profitting off the Gaza Genocide.

The university's chancellor, Minouche Shafik, called on the NYPD to arrest the students involved in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. The NYPD called the protesters and protesters peaceful and non-violent.

The heavy-handed actions by Shafik have led to Gaza Solidarity Encampments spreading to other campuses, such as MIT, Tufts University, and Michigan.

[zigcarnivorous]

More than 3,000 Israelis have signed an open letter urging "global pressure on Israel to force an immediate ceasefire." The signatories say they are motivated by patriotic duty to stop the country's war crimes in Gaza and beyond, but say the lack of sanctions from other countries has allowed Israel to continue to pursue war, abandon the hostages still held in Gaza, ignore domestic opposition and persecute Palestinian citizens of Israel without real cost.

"Unfortunately, the majority of Israelis support the continuation of the war and massacres, and a change from within is not currently feasible. The state of Israel is on a suicidal path and sows destruction and devastation that increase day by day," reads the letter. For more, we speak with Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, one of the signatories of the open letter, who says international powers including allies like the United States need to "put their leg down and say enough is enough." We also speak with him about Israel's well-documented history of using Palestinians as human shields, including in its current war on Gaza.

[pascals-doll]

“I AINT READING ALL THAT” !!!!!!