… Columbia University administrators called in the New York Police Department (NYPD) on Wednesday evening to violently suppress and shut down a pro-Palestinian student occupation of the campus’ Butler Library. Approximately 78 protesters were arrested just over a year after the police-state crackdown at Columbia last April, when the NYPD swarmed the campus to arrest over 100 students and break up the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
On Wednesday afternoon, a group of around 100 anti-genocide student protesters took over Butler’s main reading room and renamed it the “Basel Al-Araj Popular University,” after the Palestinian activist and writer killed by Israeli forces in 2017.
The students’ demands include Columbia’s financial divestment from Zionist organizations, an academic boycott of complicit institutions, cops and ICE off campus and amnesty for all university members unfairly targeted and disciplined for pro-Palestinian actions.
Columbia’s Public Safety officers immediately responded and violently barred protesters from leaving unless they showed identification, which created a prolonged standoff…
I gotta say, Hong Kongers put up way more of a fight than Americans seem to be. Hong Kong Polytechnic University went through a full blown siege in 2019. Six years later, in the land of the free, student leaders get picked off and any protests that manage to get going are easily crushed by the police.
fwiw, Hong Kong protestors were protesting about their own home, rather than these universities protesting in international solidarity against their university’s investments and policies. I’d kinda expect the Hong Kong ones to be defended more viciously.
The students’ demands include Columbia’s financial divestment from Zionist organizations, an academic boycott of complicit institutions, cops and ICE off campus and amnesty for all university members unfairly targeted and disciplined for pro-Palestinian actions.
Not a single one of which wouldn’t be a given in a sane and civilized modern society.
Columbia’s Public Safety officers immediately responded and violently barred protesters from leaving unless they showed identification, which created a prolonged standoff…
Because of COURSE they did!
When it comes to Apartheid regimes (and indeed most big picture stuff), student protesters are always on the right side of history and the people who derive income directly dependent on the atrocities continuing always react with the subtlety and intelligence of trying to remove a splinter with a machete.
Are you serious? So, any group can just take over a University now, and demand things, even if they are deemed “sane and civilized” by people like you? Okay…
In terms of how a sane and civilized society would handle this, well for starters it wouldn’t even get to this point - a sane and civilized society does not support genocide. However their argument is that a sane and civilized society would view the requests as reasonable regardless, they’re not saying that such a society would give in to their demands because of the way they were protesting.
Spoken like someone who has never attended university. Please don’t come back and say you did - that would be even worse, because it will mean you didn’t learn a fucking thing by being there.
Oh hey ZK686. Havent seen you since you were banned from news and all your comments deleted.
Are you a nematode protein?
Oh brother…
If peaceful protest is going to be consistently met with violent police response; maybe they should stop being peaceful from the outset.
I wonder how long it will take for enough to realise their government is not compatible with protests. Peer pressure does not encourage authoritarians.
The running platform was making empathetic people angry; small scale protests are a badge of honor and large scale protests are a mild annoyance to be dealt with however they deem fit.
It won’t happen at this rate. Last thing that was closest to that was the CHOP zone in Seattle a few years ago. And that still fell through. Most protest folks that participate won’t fight back since most are against baring arms and only want it to be via peace since they are too afraid to die for something. They will shift that fear on to their peers and react as well with “I don’t want to have people miss me” or “I don’t have the time to up and remove my life from what I’ve worked towards so far”
Ah yes, the CHOP zone arguing for zero police, that turned into a violent, crime riddled zone where the protesters eventually all left because, against all they believed in, without police crime runs rampant and they don’t like having their possessions destroyed/stolen, or being assaulted/killed.
It was a wonderful example of how dumb most protesters are and how they don’t even understand the consequences of what they’re protesting for.
If security shows up to stop protestors from leaving, they aren’t there to secure the peace, they are there to oppress.
They weren’t there to stop them from leaving, they were there to make them leave the right way - after being identified. The protesters didn’t like this though since they didn’t want to be held accountable for their actions, which is ironic because they want everyone else to be held accountable for things that weren’t even anything to do with their actions.
You can’t accuse someone of trespassing if you prevent them from leaving. No one is required to identify themselves to security.
Trespassing requires you to be notified that you shouldn’t be there. Without notice, there is no trespassing. After giving notice, trespassing only occurs if they remain on the property in spite of being notified they’re not allowed to be there. By preventing them from leaving, you are preventing them from satisfying your requirement for them not to be there, and thus undermining any trespassing charge.
Even if they were trespassing, none of that justifies being assaulted by police officers.
Oh brother…
Sure, but let’s step back and analyze it a little more.
Protest itself does not achieve political change. Its usefulness is in direct action or in recruiting those present into further action, education, and organizations. Liberal protests are state-sanctioned parades. Real protests tend to have an actual action to take, demands to be met, people to impact, costs to incur on others.
The terminology of “peaceful protest” is already poisoned and should be questioned. The media and politicians - and those propagandized downstream, all conflate private property destruction and violence. If a protest breaks windows, suddenly it is no longer “peaceful” and can be rejected by the propagandized as invalid and not to be supported. The US is full of such good little piggies, happy to align with the ruling class picking their pocket and doing actual violence because they exist exclusively in a world of capitalist propaganda.
Under these auspices, all direct action that the capitalist system wants to crush is, will, and has been labelled terrorism. It’s already done this for private property destruction by environmentalists, peace activists during all major wars (except WWII, where American Nazis were coddled and of course did not damage private property), labor organizers, anti-segregation organizers, socialists, communists, Mexicans, Chinese, Native Americans, etc. They happily do it again against anti-genocide protesters, particularly because they can play on the islamophobic use of the terrorism label at the same time. Like all fascistic logic, they must frame themselves as the true victims, so they also happily call every critic of Israel an antisemite.
All of this bombards the US population 24/7. Americans exist in a haze of accusations and terms they barely understand, trying to slot it into what could only charitably called an ideology - the naked reactionaries in red and the obfuscated reactionaries in blue.
All of this is to say that the greatest barrier in the US is education, and education begins with agitation, e.g. these protests in any form. Get as many people as possible to show up to the next thing, to organize the next thing, and spread knowledge.
Under these auspices, all direct action that the capitalist system wants to crush is, will, and has been labelled terrorism.
Fun fact that runs parallel to your point: it’s not terrorism if you only destroy property.
Terrorism is defined as using violence (or the threat of violence), against civilians, in pursuit of a political goal. All 3 requirements must be met for it to be terrorism: violence, civilians, politics.
Burning down a Tesla dealership is thus not terrorism. It is violent, and it’s definitely political, but the target is not civilians but property. In a similar manner, the destruction of the NordStream pipeline was also not terrorism, by definition.
On the flipside, you can argue that some things politicians do are terrorism - if you remove someone’s disability benefits that could cause them tangible harm, and thus could be considered violence, in which case a politician attacking someone’s benefits would be committing terrorism against the benefit recipients. It’s also plain to see that invading a country, slaughtering a bunch of people, and bringing some back as hostages is terrorism; but so is raising entire cities and levelling buildings full of civilians.
Terrorism has many different flavours under its definition, yet so many people just have a vague idea of what terrorism is in their minds that doesn’t hold any rationality.
Yes, once protests start breaking laws by damaging property and committing acts of violence, they’re no longer peaceful.
lmao did you even read what I wrote about conflating private property damage and violence?
I did. What these people did wasn’t just property damage being treated like violence - there was actual physical violence when they were being held, in the place that they were taking over mind you, until the police could get there. Then more violence when the police got there.
You are, to put it mildly, full of shit. The only violence was the police beating and hurting protesters.
Please try to be more honest going forward.
You know it’s all on video, don’t you? You know you’re the one that’s full of shit, don’t you?
The protesters were trying to force their way out of the building they were occupying. They got violent when they weren’t being allowed to leave.
Please try to be more honest going forward.
They were told to leave or else they would be trespassing, yet they were prevented from leaving. If you are unlawfully being detained then reasonable force is appropriate to try and leave.
The “violent police response” was in response to the protesters turning violent when they were locked in the building that they illegally took over. The police locked them in so they could identify and/or arrest every one of them as they came out, but the protesters didn’t want to be identified and held accountable for their actions, so they turned violent. That violence was met with resistance by the police, in the form of physical restraint.
It’s all on video btw. We can see that the protesters are the ones that first became violent.
They had no requirement to identify themselves to campus Public Safety Officers. PSO’s are not police. Locking them in the building is clearly unlawful detainment, and must invalidate any trespass charge as they were prevented from leaving (to be guilty of trespass you must first be notified and then remain in spite of being allowed to leave). Reasonable force is aboslutely an appropriate response to unlawful detainment.
Taking over a university facility and making demands isn’t “peaceful.” Peaceful is sitting outside of University property and protesting.
Not to mention that the protesters are the ones that turned violent when faced with the police attempting to identify and arrest them lol. It’s like they forget that it’s all being recorded by multiple people lol
Lemmy doesn’t like to hear this, they are quickly turning into Reddit 2.0…
Taking over a building is on the far end of “peaceful”.
The majority of protests involve taking over space temporarily; that alone doesn’t make them not peaceful.
They weren’t invading/forcing their way into spaces that they weren’t already openly invited to be in, nor were they violent towards officials that were demanding they leave (self-defense aside).
They refused to leave, so they were trespassing. They then became violent when they were made to stay until the police got there, and were violent towards the police.
If you prevent them from leaving at any point you invalidate the accusation of trespass.
I specifically didn’t say they were being violent. When asked to leave their presence becomes trespass. Being somewhere you aren’t supposed to be gets to the far side of “peaceful”. You’re not violent, maybe, but you’re not lawful either. At that point the police are within their right to remove you.
Peaceful does not mean lawful. You can peacefully break the law.
The law is not always right - that is why it has the facility to be changed - and when laws are wrong it is a good citizen’s duty to break them, as that is the first step to changing them.
Peaceful does not mean lawful. You can peacefully break the law.
Sure… But…
The law is not always right - that is why it has the facility to be changed - and when laws are wrong it is a good citizen’s duty to break them, as that is the first step to changing them.
Don’t be vague. We’re talking about trespassing. Somebody peaceably trespassing in your living room would be a pretty big deal.
It’s fine that they protested, but expect to be arrested when you refuse to vacate a building you’re trespassing in.
Fun fact: trespassing isn’t even a crime everywhere, not on its own. Also, trespassing doesn’t occur automatically, in a nutshell you have to be notified and then remain on the property in spite of notice - this is why No Trespassing signs are a thing, they serve as notice.
Here, the students had every right to be there so were only trespassing after they were told to leave but remained. You’re absolutely right that they should expect to be arrested after this point. However, they should not expect nor do they deserve to be assaulted by police acting unlawfully (yet apparently shielded by the legal system).
These people think that trespassing into the country is fine and not cause for deportation, so you’re not going to get an intelligent answer from them on this topic.
Maybe you could try making an intelligent comment yourself, before you criticise others?
You have literally said you are for the armement of Israel. Of course any protest against Israel is too violent for you.
Yes? If a bunch of Trump supporters took over the same building, would you have the same attitude about it?
Ohhh, Mr. “gotcha question” showed up.
Feel free to complain that I didn’t answer your question like you deserve one
Okay.
Removed by mod
Are people still applying to go to school there?
shut down a pro-Palestinian student occupation of the campus’ Butler Library
I don’t understand, though. Were they expecting not to be arrested? I thought that was the point of civil disobedience. What was the point of occupying the library if not to instigate a response from police or campus police?
They probably were intending/expecting arrests. There are probably protesters who didn’t go into the library because they specifically don’t want a criminal record (especially if they’re on a visa or some such).
And you can see in the comments here how angry the arrests are getting some people.
That’s the goal of a lot of nonviolent protest. Get your allies loud about it and split some moderates away from the authorities that they hadn’t really thought of as “the bad guys” before.
If trump admin is smart enough, they will bus police from other states to go to New York, learn and practice, trump will soon have his Schutzstaffel
So they took over a building they don’t own, refused to leave, and had a list of demands?
Yeah, sounds like something the police should be called for.
Tbh it was hilarious to watch unfold.
Protesters: “We’re not leaving until we get our demands met!”
Admin: “come out or we’ll call the police”
Protesters: “Neverrrrrrrrr!!! Free Palestine!!!”
Police arrive
Protesters: “NOOO LET US OUT!!! LET US OUT!!! WE’RE SORRY!!! PLEASE DON’T HOLD US ACCOUNTABLE FOR OUR ACTIONS!!!”
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
