By Jim Cason, David Brooks on April 28, 2024
Caroline Fohlin, Professor of Economics at Emory University beaten and arrested by police. photo: La Jornada
Washington and New York – The escalation of student protests in the United States is part of a huge movement that is demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel’s war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and whose dimensions to date include more than 8,000 acts in at least 850 cities and towns in the country during the last seven months.
Faced with the intensification of the mobilizations, characterized precisely by their diversity with the participation of Jewish and Muslim students and professors, university authorities and national and local politicians have reacted with repression, punishments, expulsions and closure of activities.
A few weeks before the graduation date, the University of Southern California (USC) announced that it will cancel the ceremony that concludes the school year, while authorities in other houses of study and supposed bastions of free speech have called in the police to repress and arrest their own students.
National Guard Stifles Free Speech
The White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the deployment of National Guard elements on some campuses as Congress considers passing a bill to shut down non-governmental organizations that support Palestinians.
Despite the repression, the political power of these anti-war and anti-genocide protesters is expected to continue to grow as the presidential campaigns accelerate. The conservative newspaper The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Harvard University’s Nonviolent Action Lab (and by the way, one of the universities where this movement has expressed itself) reported that the total number of protests in the country against Israel’s war in Gaza has surpassed 8,000 with actions in more than 850 cities.
Although the mobilizations are considerably smaller than those that occurred after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, which blossomed into the Black Lives Matter call against police violence against minorities, the project director at Harvard expects activism to continue to grow over the summer. “Without that comparison … I think, ‘wow, it’s one of the largest protest movements in a long time,” political scientist Jay Ulfelder commented to the Journal.
Yesterday students at other universities began setting up sit-ins to join the chorus demanding that colleges and universities divest from companies that in any way support Tel Aviv’s war in the Palestinian enclave.
From Boston to Texas, and from Chicago to Florida, more and more students are demanding that their schools proclaim their opposition to what is widely perceived as genocide and to Washington’s support.
In Los Angeles, a local ABC News television newscast aired an interview with Lazar Allano, the father of a USC student who is part of this movement. I am here to support my daughter, she is studying here, they are protesting a genocide. No young person deserves to be killed. My daughter started organizing, she says we have to support Palestine.
Various religious faiths unite
Images from multiple mobilization sites at universities show young people studying (it’s almost the end of the semester) praying and even performing the Jewish holy days of Passover ceremony.
A few blocks from the White House, at George Washington University, students began setting up their sit-in, just like those now being set up in Pittsburgh, Houston and Tallahassee, as well as at more and more locations.
Although almost all the demonstrations have been peaceful and the media -including the student media- report the presence of Jewish, Muslim, Christian, atheist and other religious students, who express their anger and repudiation of the Israeli offensive against Palestinians, and criticize the complicity of the U.S. government, as well as various political leaders who continue to try to characterize the protests as anti-Semitic.
For Joe Biden’s administration, the growing movement threatens to reduce voter turnout, especially among young people, thus complicating the Democrat’s re-election.
Activists are already drawing up plans for monumental demonstrations before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, while continuing to make appearances at nearly every public event of the president and his team to demand that Washington call an immediate cease-fire.
Some of the most brutal images this week came from the University of Texas at Austin, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott deployed state troopers in riot gear to violently arrest students.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, who represents Austin in Congress, visited the protesters yesterday to make it clear that not every elected politician supports the state governor.
Our country has always been better when we listen to students who challenge wars and stand up for what is right, Casar told the students, adding that other students came to that very same location in 1960 to condemn racial segregation; in 1969 against the war in Vietnam; and in 2003 in repudiation of the war in Iraq.
We need a ceasefire now in Gaza. These historical memories of student movements are also being discovered and marked by young people at Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley, hubs of the student movement of the 1960s, among others.
At Emory University in Georgia, a police officer handcuffs a woman after apprehending her, and as she is being taken away, someone asks her, “What do you need?” and she replied, “Please speak to the philosophy department to let them know I’ve been arrested; I’m the faculty president.”
Source:: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English