Four Campus Protest Reportbacks

Gare, James, Mia, and Molly compare their experiences at campus occupations in four different cities.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison
Davis and once again it has been happening here as
protest encampments have sprung up in at least eighty college
campuses all across the country as Israel continues its genocide
of the Palestine people and is now currently bombing multiple
sides of Rafa. Last month, students at American universities began

(00:22):
protesting their university's ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers, calling
for divestment, as well as urging their institutions to join
in calls for ceasefire. After a militarized police raid at
the Humboldt protest utilizing a prison swat team, police departments
around the country began cracking down more harshly on the
protest encampments. The day after the Humboldt, one, NYPD raided

(00:43):
Columbia University and fired a gun inside Hamilton Hall while
trying to use their handgun as a flashlight. The Portland
Police Bureau quickly followed suit and cracked down at the
encampment at Portland State University and have since barricaded that library.
As the time of recording, around twenty five hundred arrests
have taken place at college protests all around the country.

(01:04):
Police have displayed incredible violence, sending people to the hospital
with broken ankles and concussions. In many cities, there's been
heavy use of pepper spray, pepperballs as well as tasers.
The protests have also faced violence from a mix of
far right agitators, zionist counter protesters, and racist frats that
have targeted the protest encampments with physical violence. Especially at UCLA.

(01:24):
We here it could happen here, are lucky enough to
have correspondence kind of based all around the country. So
I'm joined today by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Molly
Konger to discuss our experiences as people who have been
present at some of these encampments all across the country.
I'm going to start by talking about Emory University here
in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a weird one, and I

(01:47):
think I'll actually go into more depth in a future episode,
but this episode's going to kind of focus on discussions
and we're going to kind of compare our experiences. So
oddly enough, I think Emory was the first one to
actually face significant police repression. Tents went up on the
Emery Quad on April fifteenth, and that morning there was

(02:07):
a heavy police response from EMORYPD, APD and Georgia State Patrol.
They fired tasers, there was rubber bullets, pepper balls, and
over two dozen arrests. Students and others began to rally
later that afternoon to retake the quad. A few hundred
people did so, and a small occupation began inside the
Kendler School of Theology building. M REPD was pinned up

(02:31):
against this building. GSP arrived as reinforcements and people started
to flee as you know, you see GSP kind of
form this area. But people were able to calm some
of those other students down and regroup and actually hold
that position for a little while longer police began attacking students,
a small clash began, there was pepper balls. People continued
to kind of hold that ground in front of the building.

(02:51):
There was students also inside. As people try to you know,
render aid to those who have been pepper bald, and
while maintaining this position in front of the building, more
and more police arrive, like a ridiculous number, and the
crowd eventually starts to slowly disperse as police just flood campus.
Police from all around the greater Atlanta area just flood

(03:13):
this very small section of Decatur, which is a small
suburb to the northeast of Atlanta or to the east
of Atlanta. I guess. Emory President Greg Fems said the
Thursday protest was concocted by outside entities, which is why
Emory PD, APD and GSP violently disrupted the protest because
it was caused by outside agitators. Line that New York

(03:36):
Mayor Eric Adams would then reiterate to justify the massive
crackdown at Columbia. So the next day we had five
undred people march around campus and then this little kind
of committee of Emory faculty and staff called it the
emvery Open Expression Committee, began to negotiate with the protest

(03:57):
and they quote unquote allowed the protest to march around
campus and this small subset of the group began to
occupy the Cox Hall food court, and police were ordered
to stay out of sight this whole day and a
few of the days after unless the Open Expression Committee
specifically called them in. And what was able to happen
is that this Open Expression Committee was able to wield

(04:18):
the threat of police as a deterrent from people taking
kind of more militant action or to actually set up
things that would hold down an encampment, like if tenths
were set up, this would result in this Open Expression
Committee to call in the police. So this was a
very successfully wielded threat. So as the night goes on
with the Open Xpression Committee does threaten to call police
on the Cox Food Hall protest, which scares a whole

(04:40):
bunch of these young teens early twenties out of the building.
A smaller group of around one hundred people remain on
the quad till midnight, police arrive, and then everyone disperses.
The next day kind of follows a similar pattern. Open
Expression and some student organizers over the course the next
few days actually start directing police to detain and criminally
trespass people wearing cafeas on suspicion of them having been

(05:03):
engaged in like doing graffiti, and really it just allows
police to target specific people that the Open Expression Committee
kind of just don't want on campus based on either
how they dress, how they're kind of walking, acting, behaving
that sort of thing. And this pattern followed basically up
until the present. People would try to take buildings do
smaller protests, police would either be called or there would

(05:25):
be threats that they would be called. It would kind
of calm the crowd down, everyone would disperse. If ten's
got set up, that was seen as like a major
sign of escalation, which would result in police being called.
And it's kind of the small back and forth. And
eventually this just kind of led to the situation Emory
slowly dissolving, slowly fizzling out as the people who were
wanting to do stuff kind of got pushed more to

(05:46):
the side, got pushed out, more and more people became
again getting criminally trespassed, and the group of students at
Emory just did not want to risk a further engagement
with police after the first day. That's kind of led
to things slowly, slowly dissolving, and that's basically with the
situation currently. Things have mostly kind of tapered off schools ending.

(06:09):
I'm sure this will be a similar similar thing across
the country as the school season is ending, and these
protest encampments will slowly also just dissolve away as police
repression continues. Let's see, who should we move on to
the next little report? James James stout from you. You
went to U see San Diego. That's right.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
I did both, both as a graduate student and then
again as an adjunct professor, and then again as a
journalist last week, which is what we're going to talk
about this time. So you see San Diego had It
was interesting. The encampment began on the first of May,
but s JP had posted this thing about their big
rally was going to be on the.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Third of May, on the Friday. Right. S JP is.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Students for Justice in Palestine. It's one of the groups
it's organized a lot of these protests across It depends
you know where you're at. You might have the Council
on American Islamic Relations, you might have the Muslim Student Association.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
You might have both. But yeah, yeah, you're Jewish Fast
for Peace. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Very often they're they're collaborating, which is great. We love
to see collaboration. So what they did was they posted
that they were going to have a big rally on Friday,
and that, as it turned out, was like a fake out,
and they actually started their encampment on Wednesday. So they
distracted ADMIN with that Instagram post, which is pretty clever,
pretty funny and They began this encampment on Wednesday on

(07:31):
Library Walk, which is kind of right in the middle
of UCSD. If people have seen, you know, people will
be familiar with the UCSD guys le library from the
film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which played important. Yeah,
I can see the look of recognition on my colleagues faces.
But yeah, that's the only thing that's ever call that's
happened at UCSD. So they set up this encampment. It

(07:53):
wasn't huge, but it was certainly a serious presence, right,
and they didn't barricade it or sort of it make
it defensible. That was a conscious choice, right, And they
did set up a security system whereby they had student
security people controlling who entered and I guess left the

(08:17):
encampment if you really wanted to, you could. The cops
got in right, like it was a waste high vinyl offence.
But in theory, these people were controlling who went in
and who went out. Some times these people were asking
people to sign up on a sheet. I think I
hope they stopped doing that because obviously that you're sort
of helping the cops make their prosecution case there. Over

(08:40):
the next five days, the encampment was extremely peaceful. Right.
There was a focus among this group on not giving
any provocation to police or to addmin to any reason
to evict them. So they had some lectures, some speeches,
they had some live music, they did some dancing, all
stuff that like in no way provocation or violent. On

(09:03):
the fifth of May, a large counter protest was organized.
Mostly it bought kind of like get off my law
and boomer types, but then also like some right wing
streamers Oreo Express or I guess the surviving half of
Oreo Express, Josh Fulfer was there. I think the guy

(09:24):
who was first responded to media, Housway or Joe Felix
was also there. These are right wing streamers that, sadly like,
if you live where I live, you have to be
familiar with where they do a lot of border harassment
to They were obviously trying to film and identify students,
so I guess this was on the evening of the fifth.
That evening, the Chancellor Costler sent around an email basically

(09:45):
saying that what the students were doing was prohibited, that
the tents were not included in freedom of speech, and
asking them to disband peacefully. The next morning at about
five or six in the morning. Literally only hundreds of
cops from several agencies. Right, the UCPD does not have
the footprint that we saw. There was California Highway Patrol,

(10:09):
San Diego Sheriff's Department, and UCPD all in full right
gear lined up opposite the encampment. They say that they
asked students to leave and that those who didn't were arrested,
and when they arrested, obviously like violence was used by
the police, as always is, the encampment was destroyed. Everything
that was there was tossed into a dumpster. Some stuff

(10:31):
was then recovered. I guess there's now a Lost and
Found people to recover there things like laptops, right, like
expensive personal items that were swept up. At that point,
people were arrested and then detained in the Price Center
at UCSD. The Price Center, if you've not been on campus,
is like a large shopping mall that also has some
lecture facilities. But it's where the Panda expresses on campus.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
It's not trapped in with the Panda Express, which is
a dangerous situation.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah yeah, pandac Express is not operational sadly more it's
a shame, but it's where they have their dining horn.
It's like the center of corporate operations on campus. It's
a very bleak place. So they're trapped in the price center.
The students around campus, those who are not in the
encampment then rallied to protect these students and tried to
block the police from loading them on buses and then

(11:22):
block the buses from leaving. And that's when we saw
the Sheriff's department using massive amounts of violence. Right our
Sheriff's department still carried just like big wooden sticks. They're
not like the black night sticks you know, with like
the right angled grip.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
It's just a giant It's just a big wooden baton.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, it's the esthetic of our Sheriff's department's right gear
is consciously or unconsciously something that I associate with the
civil rights ear and the repression of the civil rights movement.
Perhaps that's a choice, I don't know. But that was
when the Sheriff's department started to become violent. That's when
they brutalized and arrested BIRS list had students. In total,

(12:02):
sixty five people are arrested. Protests then moved down to
the two jails, right, we have a different facility. There's
a men's jenneral at women's jail, and they tend to
they tend to incartrate trans people with the gender they're
assigned at birth. I've heard about lots of things that
happened in those jails that were pretty bad, but I
haven't been able to confirm them enough that I think

(12:23):
I'd be comfortable airing them. So people are released, lots
of them charged with several misdemeanors, trespassing, encroachment, being at
the scene of a riot, resisting arrest, things like that. Right,
two members of faculty were also arrested. Forty people were students,
and at the last time I checked, they hadn't confirmed
the status of the other twenty ish people. So that

(12:45):
happened on the sixth yesterday, which was of course the eighth.
There was a big march about a thousand students. It
looked like kind of both calling for the UC to
divest and calling for the UC to drop charges and
drop academic sanctions. So right now, all the people who
are arrested are facing interim suspension. They're facing a viction

(13:06):
from their student housing, which San Diego as we've spoken
about Brazilion times has an incredibly expensive housing market and
it's almost impossible to access affordable housing here. And in
some cases, you know, they're facing serious academic sanctions. It
could affect the rest of their academic careers. Student workers
who are arrested also now not being allowed to work
on campus. So one hundred and eighty three faculty sign

(13:30):
a letter asking the university to not do that. That
came out last night, and that's kind of where we're
at in terms of what's happened to these people. I
think it's probably worth noting that the U see Riverside
settled right that they negotiated a settlement. That's in so
Riverside is north and slightly east of here, east of

(13:53):
Los Angeles County. You see Riverside is. I don't know
in terms of student numbers how big it is, but
they they settled I think on the Wednesday, so it'd
be made May day, the Friday, made the third. I
was at the UCSD encampment that day and I heard
them announce it and there were a side settlement. I'm
just going to say it didn't achieve some of the

(14:13):
more radical goals of the student organizing movement not to
be divestment, to be an academic boycott. They did get
the university to publish its investments which are linked to
Israel at least, which is a step. I guess they've
got a task force. The university is going to be
very willing to grant you task forces and panels and
things which can turn your radical aims into a bureaucratic mess. Right,

(14:36):
And they got the university to look into removing subra
Hummas from its men use as well.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Get Yeah, the biggest concession was the Hummers, which isn't
isn't great?

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Wait that was That wasn't a joke? I thought you
were joking.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
No no, I'm not joking. No no, no, no, sober
Hummas was called out by name. They didn't I'm not
saying the real investment. Yeah yeah, no, no, they're not
investing from Sabrahama's Molly. They're looking into doing that in
conjunction with their acquisitions procedure. Yeah, so you know, it's
a huge dub. I don't want to undermine what these

(15:11):
people have done. Like's it's scary when the cops come
to get you. And I understand, but this is a
sort of visa concessions or university is going to give you. Right,
you might get a snack task force, and you might
get they're already publicly available investments listed in one place
on their website at UCSD. The administration claims that the

(15:33):
students were unwilling to negotiate. I wasn't able to ascertain
if what system they had, right, Like I was trying
to ask if they had delegates or representatives, who are
going to those being different things, right, who are going
to negotiate? I was enabled to get a clear answer
and that they did very clearly publish their demands right,

(15:54):
And the university doesn't seem to have proceeded to any
of them. So that more or less is where we're
at in Sandy. There are ongoing panels and press conferences.
I'm going to attend one, so it's going to be
one by faculty tomorrow on the ninth. The faculty have
also been organizing right in a group called Faculty for
Justice in Palestine, and they've been organizing. I think it
was very impressive that they like accepted student leadership and

(16:15):
didn't try and like, you know, come in and take
a vanguard role or tell everybody what to do. But
but there mostly to facilitate the student protest and protect it.
So they're having a press conference tomorrow, so things that's
definitely ongoing here. But that's kind of where we're at
as of today, which is the ninth of me.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
We will be back in here about the happenings in
Chicago and I believe Richmond Charlotsville after this outbreak. Yeah
for sobra, I hope probably not Chockolahamas. That's the Chocolahamas
is a travesty, crime against humanity. All right, we are back.

(17:03):
I have a big bowl of non sobera chocolate hummus. Actually,
so fuck fuck all of you.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, and the break Garrison got out that chickpeas and
a blenda is a really beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Let's hear from me about what's been happening in Chicago
where there it's been multiple, multiple of these protest occupations.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
Yeah, so there's been four occupations so far in Chicago
that it's it's possible. I don't know. I'm actually kind
of surprised, Like the University Ofville, NOI hasn't, Like there
have been a few campuses that I thought would go
up that haven't. Yeah, So we're gonna talk about three
of them, because the other one I didn't get to.
We'll we'll we'll explain why I wasn't at the School
of the Art Institute one because that's a shit show.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Sixty eight arrests, Yeah, disaster.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
We will get to that. So the first one I
was at was at Northwestern, And I think the other
thing that's important about these encampments is that they're really
really geographically spread out across the city. So Northwestern is
not in Chicago, it is in is it a like
is it a suburb called Evanston? Is a very rich suburb. Okay,
The other thing we should probably get across this, these

(18:07):
are the Chicago Campment's all started kind of late into
this process. They're not there's reasons for this that I
can't get into, but they're all kind of late comers.
On April twenty fifth, Northwestern one starts, and it's a
really chill occupation for the most part. So there's like
a police raid on night one, but then the kids
just come back and put all the tents up again.

(18:28):
And then after that, like the Evanston Police Department is
a joke, right, Like they're not I mean they've probably
done terrible things, but like they're they're not They're not
like the police departments in the rest of the city,
who are like the guys you teach the CIA how
to torture people, right, Yeah, and so yeah, I wanted
to talk a bit about kind of the vibes of
it because it was it's a very like early occupation

(18:49):
kind of vibe.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Right.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
It's I mean, like I walk in there's it's it's
a bunch of kids like sitting on tents doing homework.
People are sleeping, there's like people like eating meals. Everyone's
really happy.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Very similar to people just hanging out in the quatt
Emory and I'm sure many other places around the country.

Speaker 4 (19:08):
Yeah, I think I think in everything that that should
be mentioned is you know, so like obviously these are
these are proto. These are camps insolidated with Palistin, right,
so you're you're expecting an internationalistvent this one. Like I
walked in there and there is a woman on the
stage in the encampment, will I say stage, and there's
a woman using their sound equipment, which made you quieter too,

(19:29):
But was talking about the Zapatistas and this is the
thing you see over and over and over again. Right,
It's like, yeah, these are about the encampus that I'm
at art. You know, obviously they're about Palestign. But there's
this real there's very kind of there's a deep internationalism
there that's very tangible and powerful. I mean, like you know,
I was walking through the tamp and I was I
was like, you know, there are kids like reading on
the on the lawn and I'm like I'm like pointing out, like, oh, hey,

(19:51):
this is that's the copy of The Wretched of the
Earth that I have from college. Like you know, it's
all stuff like that. It was all very chill. It
like rained on us, so we spent much time like
waterproofing tents. I think the interesting things about this is
that there's a there's a really kind of wild mix
of people there. It's it's this it's this thing you
only really get in social movements that are like going

(20:12):
somewhere where, you know. I mean I was running into
people from groups like old school, like like I ran
to someone from Students for a Democratic Society, Like I
didn't even know that groups still existed, like I thought.
I think, well, so there there was a second round
of them in the two thousands, so I thought they
died after that, but apparently not. You know, so you
have these mix of people from like groups that everyone

(20:33):
thought was dead, right, Like, you know, there's a lot
of sort of very experienced, like student organizers. There's also
a lot of grad students, which is a dynamic. I
don't think it's talked about very much because it's not
It's not just like eighteen year olds. There are a
lot of people in these camps who have been doing
this for a very long time. And you know, so
you have those people, but you also have people who
just I mean, like I talked to people who this

(20:54):
was literally their first protest, right It's like the first
thing that ever hilly they'd ever come out to. And
you know, there was this very kind of there's this
very sort of camarader ReVibe. What there wasn't was a
functional democracy, and that's a very That's the other thing
about this encampment that was very different than the Chicago one,
which I'll be getting to in a second. It's like
they there is this sort of there was this group

(21:18):
that was negotiating with the administration, and no one could
really tell what they were doing. Like every once in
a while representative would come back from them and you'd
hear something. But in the meantime, everyone is sort of
running around based on rumors, trying to figure out what
these people are negotiating. And it turns out what they're
negotiating is an end to the protests, and basically the

(21:42):
students like, okay, So there's a complicated set of demands.
What actually happens is that all of the entire occupation
is taken down. After a week, it's completely gone. Now
there's nothing there. What they get from it was the
university is re establishing an advisory committee on Investment responsibil
They got like question there's Northwest supposed to answer questions

(22:07):
about holding some stakeholders which may be disclosure may not be.
And they got some stuff that like is real from
for like visiting like Palestinian faculty. But basically they didn't
get any of the goals of the encampment, right, there's
no investments. There's you know, a committee that can make

(22:27):
recommendations about the investment and we'll see if that even happens,
because that's supposed to be spun out back in the fall.
So you know, they take down the encampment. They get nothing,
they get no leverage, and nothing is you know, and
all of the sort of student negotiators and these negotiators
tend they you know, Okay, so there are also like
political splits in the camp right, It's kind of hard

(22:48):
to get a sense of them just from looking at it,
but you know, if you talk to enough people, you
can sort of get the sense of like what the
splits are. Right, and Northwestern was sort of split between
like the sort of liberal student negotiators who are from
a lot of like some of the sort of more
liberal student organizations, and the people who want to like

(23:10):
you know, they're sort of like Baximblist radicals and the
Maximus radicals get out maduvry because there's just not enough
of them, and so they take the encampment down. And
the people who were doing the negotiations had this whole
line by we're building power. This is just the beginning,
and there's nothing, there's been nothing else.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
They're screwed.

Speaker 4 (23:23):
They lost everything. Their negotiating power is gone. They got nothing.
So in the wake of this, the University of Chicago
Encampment starts up Vinaversit of Chicago complete other side of
the city, like Northwestern is in like the like the
fucking bougiest, like richest whitest of the like of like

(23:45):
the North side of Chicago, which is like whether rich
white people are except I mean, they're not even in Chicago, right,
They're they're they're literally like they are they are a
They're a suburb. The University of Chicago, on the other hand,
is smack dab in the middle of the South side
of Chicago. There's the Universe city bubble, and then around
the university this is like the heart, like the heart
of black Chicago, right, very very different vibe. The other

(24:07):
thing that's important about this is so the University of
Chicago occupation starts in the context of the massive raids
in Colombia, the raid and Humboldt, and very importantly the
raids in UCLA, and both of both the sort of
brutal police raid and the like absolute horrowing mass fascist
attack on the barricades, where you know, you have people

(24:28):
getting beat up in the middle pipes, they're shooting. They're
shooting like Fourth of July ass fireworks, like directly into
into the people on the barricades. They are trying to
kill the protesters. They beat, They beat a bunch of
student journalists like half to death. And so University of
Chicago camp when when I get there, is right in
the middle of transforming from a kind of like Northwestern

(24:49):
style everyone's getting along like singing Kumbaya camp to like
an actual fighting camp. Because I get there and like
that day I get there at like nine, right three
hours from when I get there, they were scheduled to
be a giant rally of like right wing frats that
is going to go come and attack the encampment. So
the vibe is extremely different. It is a fighting camp.

(25:12):
Everyone is preparing to, like, you know, fight for their lives.
Everyone knows what happened at UCLA, and also everyone knows
what happened at Northwestern, and people are fucking pissed. People
are like, I mean, unbelievably angry that then you know,
then their view is the Northwestern camp sold everyone out, sure,
and so you know, I mean, And the other thing

(25:33):
about Chicago that was different from Northwestern is that U
Chicago had has functional general assemblies. So there are like
functional democratic meetings where everyone in the camp goes, Okay,
we're going to like figure out what we're going to
do and these meetings are people are not happy with,
you know, like they're not happy with what happened at

(25:53):
the Northwestern. They're also like really pissed off at the
third occupation, which was well, I mean, I guess I
think that Paul happened in the middle of there. But
the third occupation was the occupation at the School of
the Art Institute. The School of the Art Institute is
literally right in the heart of downtown Chicago, Like it
is across like it is like across the street from

(26:13):
Ballennium Park. It is like across the street from like
the Art Institute of Chicago. It is in like the
corporate center of Chicago. Sure, so they they they do.
They do an occupation right and inside of like like
I think I think they got seven hours in before
swat teams showed up. They arrest sixty of people. It
is a brutal raid. They're they're like, the cops are

(26:35):
beating people with metal bars like it is.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
It is.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
It is fucking terrible.

Speaker 5 (26:39):
It is.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
It is a bunch of SWAT teams beating up art students.
Very special and harsh. To make sure it doesn't become
like a continued thing.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
Yeah, yeah, because because then and this is the thing
about but both U Chicago and to Paul to less
tuge extent too. But U Chicago and Northwestern are on
basically like opposite extremes of the city right there. They're
not in the middle of the city, of the downtown
area that yeah, like the political league care about.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
It's on the north side, on the south side. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
School of the Artists, like this is literally the middle of Chicago,
and so they can like it's very clear orders are
coming down from above that this encampment can't be allowed
to stay, and so they get the ship beaten out
of them. And this is important for a few reasons.
One it kind of like it kind of heightens the
fear of police deppression. But the thing that it does
that's important is that this goes fucking this like completely

(27:26):
backfires on Brandon Johnson and you know, so sort of
the mayor of the political administration, because this is you know,
it turns out people are very very angry that a
bunch of swat teams just beat up a bunch of
art students with metal bars, right, And the consequence of
this is that Brandon Johnson like refuses to or at
least openly. What he's saying is that he won't use

(27:46):
the Chicago Police Department at at at you know, on
the University Chicago campus. University of Chicago has its own
police force as about one hundred and fifty officers. It's
sort of vaunted as like the largest police force in
like the largest private one of the largest private police
forces world. You know, they also shot a fucking kid
while I was at school there, so you know, I
have a like depatriot of them. But what kind of

(28:09):
ends up happening is so there's there's that big the
day I'm there, there's this big like confentration between protesters
and kind of protesters, and you know, the kids form.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
A shield protesters and counter protesters.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
Yeah yeah, so so like the the FRAT show up,
there's like a huge right wing media circus. But the
kids have a shield wall, and the shield wall fucking
holds and the counter protesters can't break it. They eventually
back off and they're separated by the cops. And from
there things get weird. The encampment gets cleared by a
raid that probably could have been stopped, you know, it

(28:43):
has they have one of these five am raids.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
You can't stop the police.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
Well, okay, so the thing I say about this, though,
this is this isn't CPT, this is UCPD. They have
like forty total, Like the number of people they can
amass at one time is about forty. So like this,
this was the only occupation that like maybe like plausibly
could have actually beaten off the beaten off the police
attack because you know, if they only have forty people
and you have six hundred like that, that that that's

(29:11):
about the point at which it's like plugged.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
It's unusual for cops to engage if they don't have
the numerical advantage.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
That's odd.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
Yeah, yeah, But what happens is that the basically the
protesters through through through it, like there's a very very
convoluated process of this. But the protesters decide not to
defend the camp, so everyone it gets raided and they'll
and like no one has up getting arrested, but they
destroy the entire camp. And Okay, I guess there's one
thing that I I probably should have fit this in
better somewhere else. But something that's very interesting about both

(29:37):
of these encampments, and this has been true of Moost
of the encampments that I've I've seen is is who
is like the racial and gender composition of who's there,
because these are you know, and you could see this
like when you're when when the counter protesters are facing
off against the protesters, is the counter protesters they're like
exclusively white, like most of them are white frat ros,

(30:00):
white cis dudes usually yeah yeah. And then in the
camps it is basically like it is like non it's
non white people of all genders and like non sis
dued people of all races. Yeah, very very very very prominently.
And this this is something that I think is a

(30:22):
sign of how the sort of like American political alignment
has changed, and the kind the kinds of political alliances
that are kind of so normal now that we don't
even really think about them. But if you step back
for a second and look at what's actually happening, this
is this is the this is the actual political composition
of these protests. It's queer people and non white people
and obviously like people like me who are both. And

(30:44):
I think that's an important thing because you know, it's
it's a dynamic of these camps. It doesn't get talked
about en off but is the core.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Thing that's happening like politically, I agree that that was
the same that was the same demographic balance at Emory.
Let's take another break and we'll come back and hear
from Mollie and then kind of have a bit more
of an open discussion to close things out, comparing the
similarities and differences from our experiences at these these four
different protest encampments or different cities. I guess, all right,

(31:24):
we are back. Mollie. You saw some pretty bad police
violence at the camp in Charldsville, I believe right.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Yes. The encampment at the University of Virginia was cleared
on May fourth by Virginia State Police. It was not
a pretty site. So the students at the University of
Virginia set up an encampment on April thirtieth in the
afternoon of the thirtieth. They had announced ahead of time
that there will be programming during the day on May Day.

(31:55):
So this sudden set up the day prior was I
think a surprise to the university. When the students first
put their stuff down, they put up some tents. The
police chief of the University Police Force, Timothy Longo, showed
up immediately and said no tense tends to the red line.
Take the tents down. So that first night they took
the tents down, and so for three nights they slept

(32:18):
outside unsheltered because it was clear from the university that
the tents are going to be the problem. That's the
only issue that we have is the tents. You can
be here. You just can't put up the tents, and
you can't use amplified sound. You can't be too noisy.
The place where they'd set up was this patch of grass.
That's so if you're familiar with the University of Virginia,
there's the lawn. It's called the lawn. It's not the

(32:40):
only grass, but it's the special grass. It's the grass
between the lawn rooms and the rotunda. It's like a
long narrow They weren't on the lawn. I think that
would have been a much bigger problem for the university,
just because of the optics of it, and because students
live in the lawn rooms. So they were actually on
the other side of the rotunda, in this shady, grassy
area between the rotunda and the chapel, within kind of

(33:01):
spitting distance of that statue of Thomas Jefferson that the
Nazis famously surrounded in twenty seventeen, so that same sort
of area of the university. So for three nights they
were out there unsheltered. It was pretty quiet. It was
you know, a few dozen students. Most of the time
classes had just ended, so they were preparing for finals,
they were writing papers. I think some afternoons they had

(33:22):
tas come out and help people with their with their papers,
help them study. You know, it was chill. They were
just kind of out there vibing. And then on the
evening of the third they held a vigil for the
dead in Palestine. There was great turnout for that. A
lot of people came out, students, families, you know, there
were babies there, dogs, like it was it was a
safe place, right, It was a place where people felt

(33:44):
safe letting their toddlers kick a ball around like. It
was not a violent or embattled environment. There were baities
there and they held the vigil, and after the vigil
they had Shabbat dinner. But as the sun was going down,
it was starting to rain, so they put up a
pop up tent to cover the Shabbat dinner. You know,
the food that had been set out and it was

(34:04):
at that point that they began setting up the camping tents.
And you know, they've been told all along by the
police chief, you can't put tens up. You can't put
tense up. It's against the rules. That's when we're going
to have to intervene if you put the tense up.
But every UVA school policy is available on the school's website.
They have a policy database where you can, you know,
search by keyword. You can, you know, you can see

(34:26):
every official school policy. And the official school policy is
that tens are allowed. It's on the website. You can
have a tent. And so now this, you know, the
university is saying that this discrepancy as well. You know
that actually isn't a policy. It was a sort it's
guidance on the policy. But it is in the policy

(34:46):
database on the policy website where they keep the policies,
and it says guideline on it, and a guideline it's
a synonym for a policy. So the other I think
the lesson to take away here. You know, I'm not
going to Monday morning quarterback the student organizers. I was
privy to internal discussions. I don't think that's my role.
I think the takeaway here though, is that they're always
going to move the goalposts. The only protest the administration

(35:10):
will ever approve of is one that happened at least
thirty years ago. Right, you have to be decades removed
from progress to see it as positive. They never like
progress while it's happening. They never like protest while it
is happening. There's nothing you can do that will be allowed. Right,
because the entire time, the first three days, when the
police were keeping their distance, they were always there. There

(35:30):
was always this sort of like needling back and forth
while you know, can you just can you adjust this?
Can you change this kind of behavior like you know
you're not breaking the rules yet, but just you know,
we're watching, be careful this constant needling. And so in
the end on the fourth, when the Virginia State Police
showed up, you know, up until that point, the idea
was well, the provocation was the tense. The problem was

(35:52):
the tents the police had to become because of the tents.
You know that the policy on the school's website changed
Saturday morning, like we have the you know, the cash
on the website. You can see when the PDF was altered.
It was that morning. So it's like, is it about
the tents? Did you change this policy as pretext for
the police raid? Because now in the aftermath, since they

(36:15):
were caught out changing that policy immediately before the police
raid of the camp, they're saying, well, no, actually, actually
it wasn't about the tents. That's not really what this
is about. It's because they're saying now that you know,
four men in essentially a black block, right, So four
men in black were carrying backpacks with helmets, were seen
in the area, and they're known to law enforcement. And

(36:35):
I'll be honest with you, I did not see these individuals.
But at the same time, who care?

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Who care?

Speaker 3 (36:42):
It's public property, right, this is a public university, you know,
this outside agitator narrative, and we had to beat and
Pepper's Brady students because of these mysterious men. But at
the same time, you know, the entire time that the
students were in the encampment, they had faculty liaisons from
Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and the faculty liaison were not,
you know, negotiating, because students were clear that there was

(37:04):
no negotiation, right that, you know, they're not negotiating on
their demands. But that all communication between admin and the
police into the encampment came through these faculty liaisons, and
they were in constant open communication. And the faculty liaisms
they are saying, well, if there was someone dangerous here,
if the police had identified like a you know, an
actual danger in this space, they never communicated that to us,

(37:26):
right that before this raid happened. No one ever said
to the faculty liaison, someone here is dangerous, there's a
known criminal here, there's you know, this is why this
has That was never communicated. So I'm not I'm not
sure these you know, four mysterious individuals exist. I don't know.
I think that is a manufactured, you know, sort of
after the fact pretext. But in any case, on Saturday morning,

(37:48):
the anniversary of the Kent State massacre, state police showed
up a lot of them all at once, and there was,
you know, the local police set up perimeter around the encampment.
And again, so it had been raining all night, it
was soaking wet. Like I showed up Saturday morning to
take some wet blankets home to wash them. Because things

(38:09):
seemed fine, Things were very calm. Again, there had been
babies there the day before it was very calm, and
so I thought, well, I'll wash their wet blankets and
socks and bring them back and then we can, you know,
they can regroup and move forward. And while I was
at home washing wet socks, I heard that the raid
was starting. And again, so you know, because it had
been raining, and it was a pretty small protest to

(38:31):
begin with, people are doing their finals. There were maybe
a few dozen people there, like a few dozen at most.
But once the riot cops showed up, people start pouring
out of the libraries. Hundreds and hundreds of students come
to see what all the noise is about, right, they
come to see what the disturbance is about. The university
used the emergency alert system that texts students. It sends

(38:52):
texts and emails for emergencies, you know, things like a
fire or a tornado or a mass shooting. Right that
a lot of these twoudents have recent memory of a
very serious shooting here that they got these texts for.
These text are for real emergencies. But they used the
emergency alert system to tell students to avoid the area.
So of course they poured into the area to see

(39:12):
what was happening, and so they set up a perimeter
around the camp so the people inside could not get
out and the people who came to see what was
happening could not get in, and a lie on riot
cops marched into the camp and just bludgeoned and pepper
sprayed at like point blank range. Pepper sprang them directly
into their mouth, nose, and eyes. I think one student
was wearing goggles and they removed her goggles so they

(39:34):
could spray her directly in the eyes while she was
already prone on the ground. One woman was having a seizure,
but they didn't stop arresting her to let her seize
in peace, and they were just sort of dragging her
limp body away. It was very nasty, and once they
made their leave twenty six arrests, they turned on the

(39:55):
crowd that had gathered to watch, and they started pushing
this massive crowd of students out into the street. They
didn't close the street, like there was a dean on
scene who was watching this happen and sort of making
frantic phone calls to try and close the street that
the students were being pushed into, because it was an
open street with traffic and then the frat boys showed up, right, So,
you know, students are coming out to see. Some of
them are joining the protests, some of them are just curious,

(40:17):
And all of a sudden, now there's an entire hillside
covered in frat boys. Some of them have Israeli flags,
some of them have American flags. And there were times
as that, you know, the police were you know, I'm
very short, I'm about five feet tall, so there were
times as the police were pushing towards us. I can't
actually see that because the person in front of me
is taller than me, and I would know the police
were starting to advance again because the frat boys would cheer.

(40:40):
They would start cheering, and you know, at one point,
I'm standing next to this older professor. You know, I
don't want to call anybody elderly, right, but this was
this sort of a grandmotherly professor who'd been pepper sprayed
and was you know, shouldered or shoulder with students, and
she looked over at those frat boys and she said,
I don't know how we're supposed to teach them.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah, like it.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
I mean, I expect a cop to be a cop.
I've been pushed around by a cop before I'll survive.
But I've never seen a cheering section for police violence before,
and like.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
I have a few times, and it's one of the
most disturbing feelings I've ever had, is when you have
police attacking people and there's a group of like twenty
to fifty to one hundred people on the other side
of the police cheering them on. It's it's one of
the most like like death worshiping moments in my life
that I've like felt like, it's.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Very ugly, very very ugly.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, it reminds me of how like in It's not
the same, but like like in Napoleonic Area, for certain battles,
it became a thing to go and spectate and people
would sit on hills and watch the like formations move
and literally have a picnic, right and have.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
This is real? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
They did it in Turkey and the Battle of Cabani too,
like people they call it media Hill until the Turkish
police take guests and BBC guys who were there, do.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
You know how do you know around numbers for arrests
or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
I believe there were twenty six arrests, the majority of
them students one was a professor, one was a reporter,
but a lot of students and grad students. And again, like,
I think it's important to talk about this idea of
the outside agitator, right because I don't want to get
blocked down and like, oh, you know, a third of
the arrests were not affiliated with the university. That doesn't
mean anything, right, Like, Charlottesville is a college town. Charlottesville

(42:33):
is UVA. UVA is Charlottesville is the largest employer in
the region. It is sort of the you know, the
iconic focal point of the region. It's a public school.
People attend sporting events there, They attend concerts that like
our largest local concert venue as a UVA property. You know,
I did attend UVA, and I sometimes speak at classes
at UBA, So like I have some sort of tangential

(42:55):
affiliation with the university, but I don't have to justify
my presence there, right. I mean, that's like saying you
can't protest albit or boeing unless you purchase bomb systems
or work there.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Right, right, Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
What this enormous institution does with its billions of my
tax dollars. Actually is my business. It is my business.
And if you're going to beat teenagers in my backyard,
that is my business, right.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, and like this is Yeah, the university is part
of the community. They spend their entire like three hundred
and sixty four days a year that that is their messaging.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
And yeah, let's as soon if the community shows up
for the university they change that. Let's say you have
like a brief discussion about I think one thing I'm
definitely hearing from from you, Mollie is like like the
presence of tents is seen as like a massive like
sign of like escalation like this this is this is
there for some reason, that's where they decided to draw
the line. It's like when tents are going up and

(43:49):
that's what needs to be cracked.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Down on, which makes no sense because like I said,
they'd been sleeping there for three days. Sure they're not
wanting to be very symbolic.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, it's very symbolic. Like I think if especially if
you look at like the images from the Columbia Quad,
like it's it's a very symbolic thing of like tenses
like we are we are like staking territory, like literally
I think like that that is has been a massive thing.
I think it's interesting the universities that have and haven't

(44:18):
had barricades set up like there was. There was no
barricades at Emory. There was no really attempt to put
barricades up. And you have like, you know, pretty pretty
big barricades in Portland of course, and then like Humboldt
being really the one that was like no, like you
can like hold down a space for like a while
if you'd have like lots of barricades, we'd see that.
We see that uh in l A and know the

(44:41):
difference between the bear kids going up and the barricades
not and how that that does kind of slow that's
just slow a police ory. That does slow some police response.
And I think one of the one of the one
of the dam dynamics we have there is like at
least her Emory, right, we had the first day, people faced,
you know, a pretty sizable amount of police violence. You know,
there was like twenty eight arrests, a lot of people

(45:04):
were assaulted by police, and for many people this was
their first protest. A lot of these people were too
young to participate in twenty twenty, which is kind of
you know, odd looking back on it, but yeah, a
lot of these people were quite young, and this is
their first experience of like police brutality in person.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
And like, what a first protest though, I mean, like
I'm trying to think back to like, you know, usually
your first protest doesn't end like this. Sorry, my dogs
are going crazy right now. But you know, I was
thinking about this.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
I was.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
It's just I think it's a a radicalizing and traumatizing
first protest experience for a lot of young people. I
was talking to a young student. Want to give too
much information about her, but she was quite young, right,
It was, you know, one of her first protest experiences.
And she said when the cop approached her with something
in his hand, she didn't know what it was, and

(45:54):
she couldn't understand what he was doing or what he
wanted from her. And it was until he raised the
object above his head that she had this realization that
he can hit me. Yeah, not only can he hit me,
but he is going to hit me. That like, to
have that realization in real time that you are not
safe in your body, that the state will carry out

(46:16):
violence against you. To not have known that before and
to find it out as it is happening, I think
is truly horrifying.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Well yeah, and so we have all these people who've
experienced it now for the first time, and when they,
you know, return to the campus the next day, they
don't want to go through that traumatic event again, Like
they don't want to. And so after we saw this
in a few cities, but we saw this even in Columbia.
But like after the first police response, how people behave

(46:44):
afterwards on campus can be quite different because they really
don't want that, and now admin is able to kind
of use threat of police. It's a very effective to
turn to be like, hey, if you keep things kind
of chill, no tense, nothing crazy. But if you just
hang out on the quad, that's it. Like that's fine,
But if you do anything else, we're gonna call in
those guys again and they're gonna fuck you up even worse.

(47:05):
And like that is very effective and scaring people away
from from doing anything. And I think a big thing
to navigate here is like how how can you get
students to feel like empowered once again, to like actually
be able to do stuff. There was this there's this
there's this one moment at emory where some like some
other like like more like you know, more militanty. I

(47:26):
don't know their exact affiliation with the university. I don't care.
But some more it's some more like militant need more
anarchistic people. Because it's Atlanta, we're like kind of like
like shaming some of the students for not like doing
more stuff. Like they got on the microphone and were
like shaming them be like, hey, this this isn't a protest,
You're just you're just hanging out, and like, I I
get it, but also like what is that going to accomplish?

(47:48):
I think I think shaming people for being scared of
police is not effective. You need to you need to
help them to feel empowered and that that's a very
different thing to navigate.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
And you can't expect you can't expect their first protest
action to be all out militant, nor should you want
it to be, like and I sure. I think one
of the things to remember is that what you know,
what does success look like? That if you know, most
of these university encampments aren't going to win divestment, right,
they all have really similar demands and they include, you know,
divestment of university funds, and most of them aren't going

(48:18):
to get that but I think you can still envision success.
As you know, these are young people. They are learning
to organize together, they're learning to create that space together,
they are coming together to talk about this issue, and
I think that can be success. I don't think you
have to bleed to have succeeded.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
No, totally, absolutely. I think just this being a learning
experience for people. And now you have a lot of
both professors and students whose view of police will forever
be different, which you know, in the long run it's
probably I would view that as like a quote unquote
good thing, even though it is you know, it's short
term trauma and possibly long term trauma. But like you
have a much more accurate view of how the world

(48:57):
works now, especially for a lot of these like IVY
kids who've never never thought of police as a threat before.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Police is always like a helper, right, And a lot
of these are like you know, good kids exactly, yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
And and and learning that like there doesn't need to
be provocation to entice a police response. That is that
is not a that's not a real dynamic.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
I mean especially at EVA, right, Like this wasn't one
of those encampments where there it had been prior clashes
or real escalation or any sort of hardening of barricades.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
No, they were.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
They were lying in their tents when the cops showed up.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Right.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
The lesson is that nothing you can do is acceptable,
so you might as well do what you want.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Yeah, and like keep your eyes. The other thing I
wanted to mention was like victory looks like a number
of different things in these protests, but like you should
focus on whatever that is. And like something I saw
among faculty colleagues sometimes, like it was just like should
we get arrested? Like sure, should should we choose to
get arrested? Like and like, no, you should not choose

(49:57):
to get arrested, like you know, we always have if
you can. Yeah, avoid it is not an end. It's
not a.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Good strategic goal to get arrested on purpose.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, I mean this is in DC where you get,
you know, a ticket and they let you go home.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
No, this will fuck up as I'm lucky if your
tenured faculty will fuck up your life a lot less
than people in other social and economic circumstances, right.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
But even in the most privileged possible circumstance, Like it
fucking sucks.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Yeah, you might be denied access to your medication, You
might be confined in a cell with people who do
not identify with the same gender as you. Right, the
cops are going to be fucking mean to you. That's
what they do, Like they do violence to retect capital.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
That's why we have a lot of people are getting
permanent nerve damage from being left in flexi cups. Like
even if even if your charges get dropped, like you
could suffer forever from this.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah, and there's you have no you know, it doesn't
matter how good your dad lawyer is or whatever.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
They're the cops. They're going to get away with it.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
But yeah, like when I think about the young people
I was talking to people, and like when I think
about twenty twenty, where I've talking.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
To young people, I'm older and thirty seven.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Like I think about my own, like, you know, growing
up as a little kid, Like there was the like
the anti Sweatshow movement, which morphed into the G eight movement,
which morphed into like Xapatista Solidarity, which morphed into the
Free Palestine movement and movement against the British National Party.
And we got to like step up until we were
fighting Nazis, Right, folks, young people who are protesting now

(51:21):
who didn't participate in twenty twenty didn't get like this
was just like a baptism of fire. Like the people
in twenty twenty got to go out in twenty sixteen
for Donald Trump, right in twenty seventeen and wear the
little pink hats and walk around in the pink hats,
you know, and they got introduced to the cops and
the fact that they are just going to fuck you
up because they want too slowly. But these people didn't.
And I don't think we should blame them for being

(51:42):
like none of us are, to be clear, but like folks,
I've seen it too much on the internet, like don't
do that shit, like teach people to be stronger than
the state. Don't shame them for not already being there.

Speaker 4 (51:53):
That's something that happened, Like I literally watched this like
happen at the Chicago cant was people like getting ready
to have to fight off like these frapros and you know,
like that experience and you know, and this is something
I think is interesting about these protests. Two was like
from UCLA, Like UCLA was like a pretty explicit attempt

(52:16):
to try to use these like right wing like paramilitary
people to knock out an encampment, and they couldn't do it. Like,
they hurt a lot of people, right, like two hundred
people I think went to the hospital or like Leaster
treated by medics after it.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Right, they hurt a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
It was really scary. But they couldn't break they couldn't
break the barricades. And that happened at Chicago too. It
was like they couldn't like it in the Chicago like
those those like they're they're on. But at nine o'clock
in the morning on the day of that encampment, there
were no fucking barricades. It was just a bunch of
tents in a lawn, right, and in like three hours
they set up a thing that you know still I

(52:50):
mean they weren't still weren't really barricades. But like you
got to watch these kids and you know, the people
who were there, like you know, like realize that a
group of them can stand and fight and hold these people,
and they and they did it. They fucking stood there,
they stood their ground, they held them, they fought and
at the end of the day, the fucking fraproos ran

(53:12):
away and it wasn't really intel. And then this is
I think it's been a really interesting element of this
is that like these these per military groups have been
just staggeringly unable to actually like beat a bunch of
protesters like in you know, in in in the sort
of military sense of like who holds the field at
the end of the fight. They can't do it, and

(53:33):
only the cops have been able to.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
And the other thing about that is, like you had
you have a more legitimate way to fight off these
like non state actionsah yeah, right, whenever you there is
because of the nature of the state's monopoly of legitimate
of violence, fighting off the police can be a lot
more tricky than fighting off these like frat boy groups

(53:56):
like that. That is, that is a very different dynamic.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
And then that was the process that like unfolded there.
It was like a lot of people who were like, yeah,
we don't want to escalate, and it was like, well, okay,
so like several hundred people are going to show up.
We also happened to us the UCLA like it has
to right, like you know, I mean like like you
can't just keep doing your sort of like we're not
gonna engage your counter protesters thing where there's two hundred
of these people who are going to try to beat
the shit.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
Out of you.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Right, there's I mean, there's choosing not to engage with
someone who just wants attention, and then there is self defense.
I think those are.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
Two different things.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, definitely need.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Some like you don't you know, you don't give someone
their viral video that they can put on YouTube or whatever,
but if someone's going to beat you with a stick.

Speaker 4 (54:34):
Yeah, And it's like I'm not saying either of them
are like right or wrong. It's just like, yeah, like
you can't. You can't use the same tactics. And being
forced to defend yourself like had this real sort of
like impact on people and like I don't know, it's
like I gotta see people just like understanding what you
can do with the physical mass of a group of people.

(54:56):
And I don't know, it was it was like it
was it was a really emotional experience for like a
lot of the people there, and it was really cool.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
So yeah, I think we it would be wrong just
to like criticize these these students specifically for dropping the
ball in various ways. I think the thing that we
can completely criticize and point to as a as a
massive failure. Is everyone who has not been participating, how
they have been viewing what's going on, and this is,

(55:24):
this is, this is this will be the last thing
I talk about, especially even even I just on like
the media side and in this general discussion, like there's
been such a such a singular focus on the campus
encampment like itself, instead of like why the protests are
happening in the first place, what's going on in Gaza
and just instead just focusing on like, yeah, the actual

(55:45):
the actual thing on campus, but but but not caring
about why these protests are even happening, willfully ignoring why
it's happening, framing all literally all of the campus protests
as inherently anti semitic, as if that is the main driver,
and ignoring ignoring the many instances for people who have
expressed anti semitic things have been have been like removed

(56:08):
and pushed out of campus, which has happened in many places.
But it's it's just it's just so lazy to totally
like reject the reasoning for why these protests are happening.
The framing of trespassing as a form of violence, call
calling these encampments violent as if as if being on
campus is violent, and meanwhile never once mentioning the actual

(56:30):
violence on display, which is almost solely at the hands
of police and these other far right groups. Friend of
the Pod Cody Johnston had a had a very very
good tweet quote, these people who I despise and never
agree with, should protest the way I prefer unquote right.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
Don't don't debate tactics with people who don't share your goals.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, yeah, and again like these people who who who
have like an ideological opposition to every single thing that
these protests are staying for.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
People do this in the actual Bush administration.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Just a wild fucking mental gymnastics to be like, it
is illegal for you to have your tents here that
is trespassed, Therefore we can violently displace you. Also, I
stand with Israel, like exactly it's happening.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Hed remind people of too is you know, you know,
the saying like, well, technically they broke the rules. Okay, Well,
technically if you're going twenty over the speed limit, the
cop can book you into jail. Would it be a
bizarre escalation of force for him to do that. Do
they normally do it? Now? They don't, Right So, just
because just because the police can intervene in certain ways

(57:35):
doesn't mean it makes sense for them to do so.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Technically, you're not supposed to bomb forty thousand civilians, right
So I think that's really weapons.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
Are illegal under under the Lahy Act, And it doesn't
matter for shit.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Because the rules, you know, the police are only only
powerful to punish you.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
The fact that there's more moral outrage across the country
or students protesting a genocide than there is for forty
thousand civilians being murdered, is just looking at a deep
hole at the conscience of this country.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:09):
Also, the thing I will say about that is if
you look at the polling numbers on this, like, yeah,
there's like like forty seven ish percent support for like
banning like protesters on campus. However, when you actually look
at the numbers, like especially if you look at numbers
of my cultures, we look at the numbers of people
in general who now like who now support like ceasing

(58:30):
like ceasing sending arms to Israel, it's been interesting, so.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Like they have been work totally. It's just that the
people who control this country is a different demographic than
all the young people who are potesting on campus, right,
which is what we're looking at. And I think it's
also important to remind you that almost every single campus
protest historically has been completely vindicated over time because they're
obviously correct, and if you deny that, who are you fooling? Anyway?

(58:55):
I think that this episode's already pretty long, but I
was happy to hear a collection of of our four
different accounts from four different places.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Oh, I do just want to say really quick before
we wrap this up. To everyone who says these students
are too young to know what they are protesting, they
couldn't possibly understand what they are talking about. Fred Hampton
was twenty one.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
People forget how how young MLK was when he started doing.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Yeah, and they're young enough for fucking Israel to kill them, right, absolutely,
there are no universities in Guys or anymore. Like, it's
just it's ridiculous. They're also young enough to join the
idea for any other military and go and kill people.
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Argument, Like, you don't have to go there and talk
to these students. They know exactly what they're protesting. They
know exactly what they're talking about. A lot of them
are actually fairly well versed on the minutia of what
divestment means and what that looks like, and what the
fiduciary duties are. Like, they're not stupid. They know what
they're talking about.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
All these dumb college educated youngsters, all.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
These eighty it's at Columbia.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Anyways, fucking nerds, you Chicago.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
It's like, we don't talk about Palestine enough in classy.
Like I teach a lot of world history classes. It's
certainly not on the little boxes you have to take.
And some people came to the encampments to learn, and
that's fucking great too. And some people taught people and
that's great too. Like it's a place where a lot
of learning happened and people became more informed over time.
You don't need to have a PhD or masters in

(01:00:18):
an area to understand that bombing children is bad and
wanted to stop. We had a world war about this,
like genocides are bad. So this will be a topic
we continue to cover on the show over the course.
At the summer, we'll have I'm planning a deep dive
about what happened at Emory Margaret has an upcoming episode
about how people who were engaged in the campus protests
can stay involved over the summer, and of course we

(01:00:39):
will continue to talk about what's been happening in Gaza.
Thanks for listening, solid Air to everyone who's out there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Flush your eyes with water.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Flush your eyes with water again.

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
Learned It Could Happen here as a production of cool
Zone Media. For more podcast to cool Zone Media, visit
our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

(01:01:10):
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,