With the greenlight of Columbia President Minouche Shafik and her administration, NYPD has entered Hind Hall through the windows and begun to mass arrest students inside. Let this be remembered as Columbia and Shafik’s legacy: one of mobilizing the violence and terror of the state against their own students and faculty, solely to prevent an end to Columbia’s complicity in a genocide.

Source

  • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
    2880·
    7 months ago

    This protest is not a thing that matters. No one will remember this in a year, probably less than that. Because you can’t just break random rules as a protest. You have to break the specific rule that is unjust. This building is not the center of Israeli government or the IDF.

    If these students went downtown to the Holocaust museum and held up signs saying “Gaza is a modern Holocaust”, that would work better. They could protest outside the Israeli Consulate too. It would also be more efficient to just call a bunch of representatives and senators every day. Get 100 students to spend one hour making calls per day and you can tie up the Congressional switchboard. Do that for a month and you will get a response.

    These students are mainly protesting to feel good about themselves. They are taking the easiest and coolest route. Actually organizing for change is tougher than just occupying your own school. It’s your school, you aren’t taking it from anyone.

    • Philharmonic3@lemmy.world
      587·
      7 months ago

      These protests have a list of specific demands, especially a demand to divest Columbia’s money from arms manufacturers supplying the genocide. Do not infantilize this. It is an organized maneuver with a specific goal.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
        651·
        7 months ago

        Columbia was founded by slavery money. Most Ivy League schools are. They weren’t clean before and divesting from arms manufacturers is not going to make them clean.

        Did these students care about that when they enrolled? No, they were all excited to go to a “good school” to get a high paying job. They don’t care about the investments. This is just a thing to do.

        • Match!!English
          211·
          7 months ago

          it’s almost like a bunch of minors went somewhere and then learned things that changed their opinions somehow

          • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
            322·
            7 months ago

            Good point. But the real question is, are they going to give the money back?

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
          234·
          7 months ago

          Wait, so students aren’t allowed to protest what their Universities do because they enrolled in those Universities, because of slavery? Do you realize how stupid you sound?

          • blazeknave@lemmy.world
            220·
            7 months ago

            A bunch of white guilt rich kids who can afford to get bailed out… I’m sorry, these people aren’t noble. No sympathy

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
      6·
      7 months ago

      objection

      I’d like to present this piece of evidence: MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail! In particular, I believe this section is most relevant:

      First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

      I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

    • z00s@lemmy.world
      937·
      7 months ago

      I have been trying to verbalise this for a while. Thank you for this comment, it’s a perfect explanation and precisely encapsulates how I feel about these protests.

      I agree with their intention, but they’re not actually helping their cause.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
        191·
        7 months ago

        I have been trying to verbalise this for a while.

        Sometimes it’s better to remain silent and let people think you are a fool than to speak your mind and remove all doubt.

        • z00s@lemmy.world
          110·
          7 months ago

          You don’t seem to understand the nuance of the situation; are you interpreting my comment as meaning that I don’t support Palestine?

          I think you may need to re-read the initial comment that I replied to.

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
            8·
            7 months ago

            I’m interpreting your comment as meaning you agree with the person you responded to, who entirely mischaracterized the protests and the protestors and painted a picture that can only be described as lying.

            • z00s@lemmy.world
              12·
              7 months ago

              I don’t think that the comment I replied to was really doing that. I’m on mobile so I can’t check right now

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
        133·
        7 months ago

        Says a random person on the internet that did fuckall for Palestine in their entire life.

    • DoomBot5@lemmy.worldEnglish
      536·
      7 months ago

      Breaking and entering has never been a form of protest that’s acceptable. At this point the protest has just devolved into doing everything they can to get arrested like that.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
        630·
        7 months ago

        No they just want to be cool and have control over some part of their lives. Like we all do. I completely understand but it’s not an effective way to protest.

        Breaking and entering can easily be a good form of protest but it matters where you break into. The Jewish dude who broke into an American Nazi meeting in Madison Square Garden was a great protester.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden

        • DoomBot5@lemmy.worldEnglish
          310·
          7 months ago

          No they just want to be cool and have control over some part of their lives.

          They’re protesting about someone else’s lives, not their own. Last I checked this isn’t Vietnam where those same students are being conscripted to fight a war.

          Breaking and entering can easily be a good form of protest but it matters where you break into.

          Breaking into a random building is not a good form of protest. I would even argue your example isn’t great either, nor really a protest.