{"id":261073,"date":"2024-04-29T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=261073"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:36","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:36","slug":"revolt-in-the-us-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/04\/revolt-in-the-us-universities\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolt in the US Universities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Where Have All the Flowers Gone – by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

University students across the country, facing mass arrests, suspensions, evictions and expulsions are our last, best hope to halt the genocide in Gaza.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

25 Apr 2024 <\/em>– Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 a.m. she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n

She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.<\/p>\n

She wonders where she will spend the night.<\/p>\n

The police gave her five minutes to collect items from her apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grabbed really random things,\u201d she says. \u201cI grabbed oatmeal for whatever reason. I was really confused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage \u2014 many are facing suspension and expulsion \u2014 that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students \u2014\u00a0 many of those protesting are Jewish \u2014 but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes. These students watch, like most of us, Israel\u2019s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them.<\/p>\n

Not one university president has denounced Israel\u2019s destruction of every<\/a> university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words \u201capartheid\u201d or \u201cgenocide.\u201d Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.<\/p>\n

Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations \u2014 including weapons manufacturers \u2014 and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including<\/a> thousands of children<\/a>. They have allowed the abusers \u2014 the Zionist state and its supporters \u2014 to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue \u2014 genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of \u201creactive abuse.\u201d Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.<\/p>\n

Princeton University, like other universities across the country, is determined to halt encampments calling for an end to the genocide<\/a>. This, it appears, is a coordinated effort by universities across the country.<\/p>\n

The university knew about the proposed encampment in advance. When the students reached the five staging sites this morning, they were met by large numbers from the university\u2019s Department of Public Safety and the Princeton Police Department. The site of the proposed encampment in front of Firestone Library was filled with police. This is despite the fact that students kept their plans off of university emails and confined to what they thought were secure apps. Standing among the police this morning was Rabbi Eitan Webb<\/a>, who founded and heads Princeton\u2019s Chabad House. He has attended university events to vocally attack those who call for an end to the genocide as anti-semites, according to student activists.<\/p>\n

As the some 100 protesters listened to speakers, a helicopter circled noisily overhead. A banner, hanging from a tree, read: \u201cFrom the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students said they would continue their protest until Princeton divests from firms that \u201cprofit from or engage in the State of Israel\u2019s ongoing military campaign\u201d in Gaza, ends university research \u201con weapons of war\u201d funded by the Department of Defense, enacts an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, supports Palestinian academic and cultural institutions and advocates for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.<\/p>\n

But if the students again attempt to erect tents \u2013 they took down 14 tents once the two arrests were made this morning \u2013 it seems certain they will all be arrested.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is far beyond what I expected to happen,\u201d says Aditi Rao, a doctoral student in classics. \u201cThey started arresting people seven minutes into the encampment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Princeton Vice President of Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun sent out a mass email on Wednesday warning students they could be arrested and thrown off campus if they erected an encampment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus,\u201d she wrote. \u201cFor students, such exclusion from campus would jeopardize their ability to complete the semester.\u201d<\/p>\n

These students, she added, could be suspended or expelled.<\/p>\n

Sivalingam ran into one of her professors and pleaded with him for faculty support for the protest. He informed her he was coming up for tenure and could not participate. The course he teaches is called \u201cEcological Marxism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a bizarre moment,\u201d she says. \u201cI spent last semester thinking about ideas and evolution and civil change, like social change. It was a crazy moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

She starts to cry.<\/p>\n

A few minutes after 7 a.m, police distributed a leaflet to the students erecting tents with the headline \u201cPrinceton University Warning and No Trespass Notice.\u201d The leaflet stated that the students were \u201cengaged in conduct on Princeton University property that violates University rules and regulations, poses a threat to the safety and property of others, and disrupts the regular operations of the University: such conduct includes participating in an encampment and\/or disrupting a University event.\u201d The leaflet said those who engaged in the \u201cprohibited conduct\u201d would be considered a \u201cDefiant Trespasser under New Jersey criminal law (N.J.S.A. 2C:18-3) and subject to immediate arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few seconds later Sivalingam heard a police officer say \u201cGet those two.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hassan Sayed, a doctoral student in economics who is of Pakistani descent, was working with Sivalingam to erect one of tents. He was handcuffed<\/a>. Sivalingam was zip tied so tightly it cut off circulation to her hands. There are dark bruises circling her wrists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an initial warning from cops about \u2018You are trespassing\u2019 or something like that, \u2018This is your first warning,\u2019\u201d Sayed says. \u201cIt was kind of loud. I didn\u2019t hear too much. Suddenly, hands were thrust behind my back. As this happened, my right arm tensed a bit and they said \u2018You are resisting arrest if you do that.\u2019 They put the handcuffs on.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was asked by one of the arresting officers if he was a student. When he said he was, they immediately informed him that he was banned from campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo mention of what charges are as far as I could hear,\u201d he says. \u201cI get taken to one car. They pat me down a bit. They ask for my student ID.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sayed was placed in the back of a campus police car with Sivalingam, who was in agony from the zip ties. He asked the police to loosen the zip ties on Sivalingam, a process that took several minutes as they had to remove her from the vehicle and the scissors were unable to cut through the plastic. They had to find wire cutters. They were taken to the university\u2019s police station.<\/p>\n

Sayed was stripped of his phone, keys, clothes, backpack and AirPods and placed in a holding cell. No one read him his Miranda rights.<\/p>\n

He was again told he was banned from the campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this an eviction?\u201d he asked the campus police.<\/p>\n

The police did not answer.<\/p>\n

He asked to call a lawyer. He was told he could call a lawyer when the police were ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may have mentioned something about trespassing but I don\u2019t remember clearly,\u201d he says. \u201cIt certainly was not made salient to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was told to fill out forms about his mental health and if he was on medication. Then he was informed he was being charged with \u201cdefiant trespassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI say, \u2018I\u2019m a student, how is that trespassing? I attend school here,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThey really don\u2019t seem to have a good answer. I reiterate, asking whether me being banned from campus constitutes eviction, because I live on campus. They just say, \u2018ban from campus.\u2019 I said something like that doesn\u2019t answer the question. They say it will all be explained in the letter. I\u2019m like, \u2018Who is writing the letter?\u2019 \u2018Dean of grad school\u2019 they respond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sayed was driven to his campus housing. The campus police did not let him have his keys. He was given a few minutes to grab items like his phone charger. They locked his apartment door. He, too, is seeking shelter in the Small World Coffee shop.<\/p>\n

Sivalingam often returned to Tamil Nadu in southern India, where she was born, for her summer vacations. The poverty and daily struggle of those around her, to survive, she says, was \u201csobering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe disparity of my life and theirs, how to reconcile how those things exist in the same world,\u201d she says, her voice quivering with emotion. \u201cIt was always very bizarre to me. I think that\u2019s where a lot of my interest in addressing inequality, in being able to think about people outside of the United States as humans, as people who deserve lives and dignity, comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n

She must adjust now to being exiled from campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gotta find somewhere to sleep,\u201d she says, \u201ctell my parents, but that\u2019s going to be a little bit of a conversation, and find ways to engage in jail support and communications because I can\u2019t be there, but I can continue to mobilize.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya.<\/p>\n

The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes.<\/p>\n

History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2024 Chris Hedges<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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