Protests 2024 - Stop Hey What's That Sound...

[Victoria Raverna]

UCLA faculty and staff members press conference:

[Dogstar]

Fair enough, but don’t you have to wonder why those definitely NOT pro-Hamas protesters were carrying ACABposters?

Like, what does ACAB really have to do with Gaza?

I’d suspect, although obviously I can’t be sure, that ACAB might have something to do with the police breaking up the various encampments plus the farcial reasons that have been offered in support of the actions, such as the NYPD with the bike chain, two outside agitators, and “book on terrorism.” Then again, the protestors are on the left, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that they support Gaza and dislike police.

[Grifman]

Pro-Hamas?

That tells you all you need to know about this fellow's posts.

I never click Xitter links so I'll leave it there.

I agree that there’s no evidence that these protests are “pro-Hamas”, but that doesn’t really change the point of the post nor dos it change what they did, nor how people are likely to react to it. Disrupting a once in a life time graduation ceremony is unlikely to change anyone’s minds.

[Exodor]

This is not productive:

True - unlabeled Twitter links look like this and contribute nothing to the discussion:

[Holman]

Fair enough, but don’t you have to wonder why those definitely NOT pro-Hamas protesters were carrying ACABposters?

Like, what does ACAB really have to do with Gaza?

Just spitballing here, but maybe the very excessive use of police violence against Gaza protesters?

[Victoria Raverna]

UCLA pro Palestinian student protestor press conference about the clash:

[Kraken]

Pro-Hamas?

That tells you all you need to know about this fellow's posts.

I never click Xitter links so I'll leave it there.

I agree that there’s no evidence that these protests are “pro-Hamas”, but that doesn’t really change the point of the post nor dos it change what they did, nor how people are likely to react to it. Disrupting a once in a life time graduation ceremony is unlikely to change anyone’s minds.

Especially since this year's graduating class was also robbed of high school graduation ceremonies by covid-19 restrictions.

I need to start paying more attention to details of these protests. To date, I've just brushed it off as "students being students." I went to a couple of marches and demonstrations in college, too. As one does. We opposed the Shah of Iran (the US puppet who would soon be overthrown) and nuclear power (in the wake of Three Mile Island). 1979 was a heady year, but those were lightweight issues compared to what's going down now.

It seems that some schools are defusing tensions by listening to students and promising to act on their concerns, by investigating divestiture, for instance. Whether that actually goes anywhere might be moot since commencement is commencing now and there might be a ceasefire by the time the fall semester starts. If that doesn't come about, failure to live up to their promises might bite them in the ass come September. But for the moment making promises is an effective way to defuse tensions.

[Victoria Raverna]

From what I read, it seemed like the protest was small and relatively peaceful before overaction by the Columbia University's administration. After that situation escalated and spread to other universities.

[Victoria Raverna]

Columbia's student council statement:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... otest-gaza

On Tuesday night, we watched in horror as hundreds of riot police flooded our beloved campus and brutalized our classmates. The next day, students awoke with swollen faces, bruised wrists and lacerations – all results of inhumane police treatment. The past two weeks have been tumultuous, marked with mass arrests of student demonstrators, an encampment on our lawns, national media attention and vile acts of hatred. Countless have spoken on our behalf. But by speaking over us, media outlets and politicians have created a distorted narrative – one which unfairly characterizes our community.

Now, it is time to elevate student perspectives, the “us”, rather than the “them”. The traumatic environment and militarization of our campus are not the sole product of ill-intended protesters or reckless non-affiliates, as claimed by administrative emails; rather, they are the fault of the senior administration themselves. For months, this crisis has brewed as administrators neglected student and faculty voices. We must be clear: the administration has put our students’ safety at risk and has failed to ensure a conducive learning environment. As student leaders, it is time for our voice to be heard.

The seeds of the NYPD’s 30 April raid on Columbia University were planted nearly six months ago. On 24 October, Columbia’s senior administration unilaterally created an illegitimate university event policy in the aftermath of peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrations, granting them the power to regulate protests and “‘sole discretion’ to determine sanctions on student organizations and their members”. Thus, senior administration circumvented process and procedure and undermined shared governance, rather than adhere to the rules of university conduct, adopted by our university senate and set out in the university statutes.

This was only the beginning of what would become a pattern of executive overreach. The results of this unprecedented action first manifested on 3 November, when the Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were suspended due to unsubstantiated claims of “threatening rhetoric and intimidation”.

When this rationale was questioned in January, senior executive vice-president Gerald Rosberg admitted that “there was no intent to insinuate that one group was threatening” and “if the reference was read that way, he offered his regrets”. This dismissive and inactionable apology was inadequate and unproductive. Rosberg’s comments did not rectify the university’s wrongdoing, and only further initiated a standard of stifling free speech. The move, condemned by both faculty and students, elicited a commitment from the administration to re-evaluate its actions and engage in more transparent decision-making processes.

Unsurprisingly, this was an empty promise. The administration has continued to make decisions without our input, disregarding our community’s wellbeing, values and rules. The taskforce created to address antisemitism did not include students and was inefficient. The administration also failed to properly acknowledge, much less tackle, the growing presence of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate on our campus.

Adding fuel to the fire, senior administration then enabled our campus to turn into a hotspot for politicians, radicalists and opportunists, despite repeated claims by the senior administration that they were working to “ "keep all members of our community physically safe”. Shai Davidai, an assistant professor in the business school, publicly characterized Jewish students at pro-Palestinian demonstrations as “terrorists” and “Judenrat” whilst receiving more than 50 complaints. He was permitted to remain on campus for months. Professor Joseph Massad described the 7 October attack as “awesome”; he remains on campus. Even the co-founder of the terrorist militia group Proud Boys gained access to Columbia.

These administrative choices to avoid disciplining or barring extremists exposed many of our peers to known threats, perpetuated the narrative that Columbia is hatred-ridden and set the stage for political theatrics, without advancing the safety of Jewish students. As our community slowly burned, our president, the co-chair of the taskforce on antisemitism and the co-chairs of the board of trustees were questioned in Congress on the basis that Columbia tolerates antisemitism through hateful protests. Contrary to these allegations, the protests at Columbia were organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (Cuad): a non-violent and decentralized coalition of more than 100 recognized student groups across the political and cultural spectrum. At the hearing, the administrators also failed to defend our university’s commitment to academic freedom – a legal requirement and a core tenet of all educational institutions, furthering the false narrative of hate that continues to misrepresent our community.

On 17 April, in response to the persistent disregard by our administrators, student activists chose to demonstrate through a peaceful encampment on our university’s lawns – a description corroborated by the NYPD’s chief of patrol. Media and politicians sensationalized these students as largely violent extremists. Yet, we witnessed students create and uphold community guidelines disavowing all forms of hate. We witnessed people of different faiths and religions protecting each other during prayers. We witnessed a community form, with student groups dancing, singing, teaching and making art together.

But instead of engaging with these protesters or charging them with rules of university conduct violations, the administration chose to call the NYPD on to campus – leading to the arrests of 108 student protesters and the unsanctioned arrests of two legal observers on 18 April 2024. This action marked a gross escalation in the administration’s negligence of shared governance: ignoring a unanimous veto by the university senate executive committee, who are required to be consulted before police enter university grounds. This neglectful decision was met with harsh rebuke from much of Columbia and mischaracterized our community as violent extremists. Rather than quell the protest, tensions inflamed and a second encampment, even larger than the first, was erected within hours.

Of all the administration’s actions, the days preceding this week’s NYPD raid have been the most emblematic of their tactics to heighten tension and fear on our campus, silencing speech in the process. Their initial move to end the second encampment involved leveraging title VI, an anti-discrimination law, to mass-discipline students, citing the sensationalized narratives promoted by politicians and the national media. In response to the mass suspensions following a failure to come to an agreement in negotiations, an “autonomous group” of student activists occupied Hamilton Hall at about 12.30am on 30 April.

Within hours, the administration imposed a campus-wide lockdown, preventing all students from accessing vital resources – food and medical assistance – as well as one another – during final exam season. The overwhelming majority of us woke up shocked at this disproportionate university response. Subsequently, the administration denied EMTs and legal observers access to campus – a clear demonstration of what they were trying to accomplish: isolating the occupiers.

As the sky turned dark on Tuesday night, students received an ominous “shelter-in-place” directive. While we frantically called our parents in fear, NYPD trucks and correctional buses lined our streets, barring any escape from Morningside Heights. We were trapped in our dorms or outside in the rain as the raid escalated. Police penned bystanders into nearby buildings and steadily forcibly removed all remaining reporters from campus.

As Columbia lay void with the occupiers strategically alienated, the NYPD struck. The action, while in response to rules violations, was distinctly militaristic and disproportionate. Though NYPD footage showed that the officers, including Swat and strategic response teams, significantly outnumbered the protesters, they utilized flash-bang grenades, swung batons and drew firearms on the few dozen unarmed students. The police continued to limit video documentation by flashing lights at phones recording from the nearby dorms.

The few clips available captured police pushing students down the stairs, an unconscious student lying in front of Hamilton Hall, and hostile engagements between officers and bystanders. A student was even denied permission to leave a building to retrieve essential heart condition medication. The administration claimed to intend to restore safety and order by authorizing these hundreds of NYPD officers to commandeer our school. Instead, they terrified, sickened and traumatized us.

Right now we should be focused on our final exams. Instead, the university’s actions have made it impossible for us to focus on anything besides our peers’ physical safety and access to food. The misrepresentation of events perpetuated by administration has allowed them to justify extreme police force and brutality against their own students. The administration has betrayed us. As student representatives, we detest this false, harmful portrayal of our community. It is only because of student journalism, such as the Columbia Spectator and WKCR-FM’s 24-hour radio coverage, that we have started reclaiming our narrative.

We urge you to listen to us – not political figures, not the radical fringes and not misguided media. Across the country, non-violent protests and encampments on college campuses have been touted by administrations, media and bad-faith actors to be hateful without proper investigative journalism. While this has been a major topic in the news cycle recently, rarely do we see any student perspective represented other than a few token quotes. When we, a group of 60 and more elected to represent the student body, tried to share our voices through this piece, we were turned down by publication after publication.

We now ask you to give us, the students, our voices back. Not to turn attention towards ourselves, but towards where it rightfully belongs: the Middle East.

This statement was passed in the Columbia College Student Council by a margin of 22-4-2

[Victoria Raverna]

Protestors at Tel Aviv:

[Grifman]

And so it begins:

[LordMortis]

One would think that sort of ad would shift the stay at home voters and the vote for TFG because Biden isn't doing enough to dissuade Israeli brutality away from staying at home and away from voting for TFG. I'm guessing one would be wrong, though...

[Victoria Raverna]

Interesting that MSNBC criticized news media's hypocritical hysteria about the student protestors when MSNBC also did the same:

[Grifman]

[LordMortis]

I'd agree with that sentiment but attention doesn't seem like it wants to be on Gaza with or without student demonstrators, much like we pay zero attention to Russia and Ukraine. Demonstrators definitely put Gaza focus on demonstrators, but would there be much if any Gaza focus at all without them? I'm not sure there would be. OtOH, maybe there is something more productive than can be happening. Not sure what. Giving time to a cause that is public faced?

[LawBeefaroni]

Are they actually trying to pass this off as a how-to guide?

If nothing else, don't they know we all have Amazon?

Holy shit, It also appears that the large-size book that cop is holding is a blown-up prop.

The actual size of volumes in Oxford's "Very Short Introduction to" series is that of a *very* slim paperback novel. NYPD put that much work into this without even reading the back cover to see what the book was about.

I don't know what the NYPD PR/media team is like but I'd guess they're like most large departments. Meaning that they're not professional PR teams, they're career cops and admin staff who have some media training/experience. I know that's how CPD is.

That's not to excuse them or indict them, it's just what you're going to get most of the time.

Tarik Sheppard, NYPD Deputy Commisioner of Public Information, experience at LinkedIn:

New York City Police Department
Full-time · 20 yrs 5 mosFull-time · 20 yrs 5 mos

Deputy Comissioner of Public Information
Aug 2023 - Present · 10 mos
Deputy Inspector
May 2023 - Aug 2023 · 4 mos
Police Captain
Jan 2020 - May 2023 · 3 yrs 5 mos
Police Lieutenant
Jan 2015 - Jan 2020 · 5 yrs 1 mos
Police Sergeant
Jan 2010 - Jan 2015 · 5 yrs 1 mos
Police Officer
Jan 2004 - Jan 2010 · 6 yrs 1 mo

[Victoria Raverna]

Pro-Palestine Protests at Tokyo:

[Grifman]

Most don’t really care:



Some interesting results in this poll of college students.

[Victoria Raverna]

You don't need to be a lefty to be against genocide and support free speech.

[Victoria Raverna]

Macklemore released a new song:

HIND’S HALL. Once it’s up on streaming all proceeds to UNRWA.

[waitingtoconnect]

Are they actually trying to pass this off as a how-to guide?

If nothing else, don't they know we all have Amazon?

Holy shit, It also appears that the large-size book that cop is holding is a blown-up prop.

The actual size of volumes in Oxford's "Very Short Introduction to" series is that of a *very* slim paperback novel. NYPD put that much work into this without even reading the back cover to see what the book was about.

Sorry can’t resist.

[Victoria Raverna]

We have heard about pro-Palestinian protestors harassing Jewish students and made them feel unsafe but the reality is that both side have incident like that.



It is okay to post that here right?

[hepcat]

I’m confused. I thought you said it was happening on both sides but that video doesn’t appear to be saying that.

[Victoria Raverna]

I’m confused. I thought you said it was happening on both sides but that video doesn’t appear to be saying that.

I think there were video or news about the other side. Just go back to earlier post.

[hepcat]

So you’re not really saying it’s happening on both sides with that video, you’re responding to someone who posted a video of it happening to Jewish or Israeli students. The opening comments n your post seemed to say it was happening on both sides, here’s evidence of that. That’s what threw me.

[Victoria Raverna]

So you’re not really saying it’s happening on both sides with that video, you’re responding to someone who posted a video of it happening to protestors. The opening comments n your post seemed to say it was happening on both sides, here’s evidence of that. That’s what threw me.

Yeah. I just provided an example of someone from the other side's bad behavior. Not that every pro-Israel protesters are like that.

[hepcat]

Sorry, typo in my previous post. I meant to write

you’re responding to someone who posted a video of it happening to Jewish or Israeli students

[Victoria Raverna]

I think America need more politicians like Sanders:

Today I offer a simple resolution:

NO to antisemitism.
NO to Islamophobia.
NO to racism and bigotry in all its forms.
YES to free speech and protest under the 1st Amendment, whether on a college campus or across our nation.

[El Guapo]

[hepcat]

[Kurth]

Ignorant, naive fools. School can't let out fast enough.

[Zarathud]

Protests are stupid. They get so caught up in their mob action, they forget the goal is to persuade others.

Frankly, that’s one of the special things about the Civil Rights Movement. Many leaders were acutely aware of how their actions would play to Americans on TV, and moderated their actions to achieve maximum persuasion to achieve their goals.

[Holman]

Protest actions like these include a lot of people, and not everyone agrees with everyone.

Projecting flames atop an American flag image just means that some of the most radical members of the protest had a projector. If they started burning actual American flags, most of the college kids would not enthusiastically be a part of that.

Rick Perlstein (always worth reading) has a new article in the American Prospect: "The New Anti-Antisemitism". He points out the complexity of the protest landscape (including an example where pro-Israeli provocateurs tried to get a "Death to All Jews" chant started before the pro-Palestinian protesters shouted them down).

[Holman]

Protests are stupid. They get so caught up in their mob action, they forget the goal is to persuade others.

Frankly, that’s one of the special things about the Civil Rights Movement. Many leaders were acutely aware of how their actions would play to Americans on TV, and moderated their actions to achieve maximum persuasion to achieve their goals.

I think that's a sanitized and hindsight-inspired version of Civil Rights protest, although it's one we like a lot because it allows everyone to feel like conflict was smoothly managed.

Many techniques were tried. Many were at odds with each other. Tactics were never managed from some top-down authority, and the movement itself was riven by divisions. Just like today.

At the time of his assassination, the great majority of white Americans hated MLK, and they hated him for the discomfort he'd made them feel.

[Kurth]

Protest actions like these include a lot of people, and not everyone agrees with everyone.

Projecting flames atop an American flag image just means that some of the most radical members of the protest had a projector. If they started burning actual American flags, most of the college kids would not enthusiastically be a part of that.

Rick Perlstein (always worth reading) has a new article in the American Prospect: "The New Anti-Antisemitism". He points out the complexity of the protest landscape (including an example where pro-Israeli provocateurs tried to get a "Death to All Jews" chant started before the pro-Palestinian protesters shouted them down).

Thanks for the link to the Perlstein piece. I read it. I couldn't stand it.

But first, let's not head into "false flag" territory like some tin-hat wearing 1/6 insurrection denier. Your characterization of the "Death to All Jews" chant is way, way off. That's not at all what happened or what was suggested by Perlstein. Rather:

Footage taken late Friday night of a tense confrontation between pro-Palestine demonstrators and pro-Israel counter-protesters at the encampment revealed it was a pro-Israel student demonstrator who said “Kill the Jews,” asking the pro-Palestine demonstrators “anybody on board; anybody on board?”
...
Multiple media personnel, including two Huntington News editors, were present during the verbal altercation and confirmed they heard someone say “Kill the Jews,” but could not confirm who. Huntington News reporters, who covered nearly the entire duration of the encampment, did not hear the statement repeated at any other point during the demonstration.
...
Tori Bedford, a GBH reporter who was on campus during the altercation, said on X she heard the statement “said by a counter-protester holding an Israeli flag, seemingly as a provocative joke in response to the group’s pro-Palestine chants.”

There was not a chant. There was no attempt by "pro-Israeli provocateurs" to start one. It was a single idiot pro-Israel student trolling the protestors with a single comment. The story here is that the idiot police seized on that comment and took it out of context to justify their response. But come on. Your characterization is counter factual. Watch the video.

Back to the Perlstein piece, he describes the current Gaza protests as:

Students peacefully chanting slogans on a single, specific issue, backed by easily realizable demands? Pshaw.

Pshaw, indeed. That's a really generous characterization of these protests, and I think it's a head-scratcher that he thinks the protestor's "specific issue" demands are easily realizable. What is he talking about?

He characterizes the UCLA encampment like this:

That was at UCLA, where, not to put too fine a point on it, taking advantage of a rare absence of police presence or any sort of security except for the flimsy plywood boards demonstrators deployed as shields to protect their perimeter, fashy thugs crying things like “No place in the world for you!” started going after them with flying karate kicks, sticks, and tear gas.

I'm not justifying the counter-protestors attacking the encampment, but to act like it was just some flimsy plywood for self-defense is just stupid. They were fortifying behind wooden and metal barricades. Again, there are receipts. It's all on video.

And this:

The chancellor said the encampment was a “provocation” to violence. Southern sheriffs used to say the same thing about civil rights demonstrations. Which now seems somewhat the position of the leadership class of the Democratic Party, too. In order to “protect Jews.” In effect, discouraging political speech against a war enacted by a veritable fascist government thousands of miles away, and doing so in a way that serially humiliates the president of the United States.

Israel's government is shit, but to call it fascist really calls into question whether Perlstein actually understands what that word really means.

Perlstein ends with this:

Last week, I noted a creepy viral right-wing blog post about how “the Democrats have crossed the bridge into unabashed Nazism.” I promised to follow up with more detail. So how have the Democrats, according to this, turned into Nazis? By making “certain that behind the scenes the Biden Administration does not waiver in taking all steps necessary to prevent Israel from permanently destroying Hamas.”

The sort of people who wrap themselves in flags and bust up protests think you are the Nazi, fellow Democrat. Even if you think the IDF has no choice but to do what they are doing: Trumpies don’t make distinctions like that among the “enemy.” So the war will go on yet more viciously, no matter what Joe Biden says; many more people, lots of them Jews, very, very anguished, will protest lots more.

On this, I think I agree with him. The only thing that maybe makes me angrier than the rampant anti-semitism I'm seeing right now is the opportunistic, morally-bankrupt GOP trying to use it to attack education (they've now moved on from universities to public K-12) and as a wedge between Jewish voters and the Democrats. They're also using it to push through harmful restrictions on free speech like the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.

All of that is morally repugnant.

But Perlstein's piece is also harmful and wrong to the extent it strongly suggests "there's nothing to see here" as far as a rise in anti-semitism in the U.S. and globally.

[ImLawBoy]

Protests are stupid. They get so caught up in their mob action, they forget the goal is to persuade others.

Frankly, that’s one of the special things about the Civil Rights Movement. Many leaders were acutely aware of how their actions would play to Americans on TV, and moderated their actions to achieve maximum persuasion to achieve their goals.

I think that's a sanitized and hindsight-inspired version of Civil Rights protest, although it's one we like a lot because it allows everyone to feel like conflict was smoothly managed.

Many techniques were tried. Many were at odds with each other. Tactics were never managed from some top-down authority, and the movement itself was riven by divisions. Just like today.

At the time of his assassination, the great majority of white Americans hated MLK, and they hated him for the discomfort he'd made them feel.

Right. There were active Black Power movements that were vocal and in no way played to (white) Americans on TV. Even a lot of MLK's activities were scorned by white Americans, both in the North and the South. (MLK famously said after spending some time in Chicago (paraphrasing) "The people in Mississippi could learn a thing or two about hate from Chicago.")

It remains to be seen what hindsight will make of today's protests, but once again it's worth noting that famous protest movements like civil rights and anti-Vietnam War were deeply unpopular at the time, and are only seen positively after many years have passed.

[GreenGoo]

It remains to be seen what hindsight will make of today's protests, but once again it's worth noting that famous protest movements like civil rights and anti-Vietnam War were deeply unpopular at the time, and are only seen positively after many years have passed.

Thank you. It boggles the mind that these protests today are being coloured as uniquely awful and anti-american and destructive. America has a long history of protests, many of which were for good causes and successful, that were denigrated and derided by media during their time.

It's like America doesn't know it's own history, so it's doomed to repeat it. I get why media is pushing this narrative. I don't get how intelligent Americans are falling for it.

[Blackhawk]

Neither of them are.

[Victoria Raverna]

I hope this isn't going to offend anyone here. I watched this video about the HK protest at 2019 compare to the US student protest in 2024:



I don't know if the content of the video is fact or Chinese propaganda. I don't know who is the guy in the video. I tried and I can't find any article or video that made the same comparison so I can't say the video is correct or not.

[Zarathud]

I never said the Civil Rights movement was monolithic or didn’t have dissent. I said “many” leaders were attentive to how things might play out.

Maybe my impression is different having talked to several religious leaders who marched with and supported MLK — who was the active target of a government deep state propaganda campaign. Despite the public disapproval and pressure of other more radical parties, a group of leaders stuck to nonviolent protest where the disruption and violence by police emphasized the message — the law was unfair and brutal to Blacks.

They were willing to go to jail to prove their point. And there was a strategy on how that would play out. I get no sense of that from these campus protests, which seem similar to the disorganized mess of the Iraq war protests.