When you scratch the surface, oil is a major part of the problem:
As a side note, I doubt any protest is going to convince a university to divest from tech stocks like Google and Microsoft which lead the market.
Jean-Pierre reiterated that the White House would not consider sending troops to any campus without first receiving a request from the governor. She also declined to say whether Biden would support deploying the National Guard if asked, instead referring back to a statement the White House published Sunday recognizing Passover.
“He said that antisemitism, basically, is wrong and we should call that out and there is no place for hate or hateful rhetoric or any type of violence,” Jean-Pierre said.
Following that statement, Biden made public remarks in which he qualified his condemnation of antisemitism by also criticizing people who don’t empathize with the Palestinians, too.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/25/white-house-johnson-national-guard-protesters-00154374
Tying this to 9/11 (which should have been a more prominent comparison, I would say):
But if we take a step back from this immediate controversy, we should see that what is unfolding on campuses is nothing new. It’s merely the latest iteration of a battle over who can say what about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And you do not have to endorse every strategic or rhetorical move of the protestors to recognize that the right has dramatically escalated its effort—which stretches back more than two decades to the immediate post-9/11 period—to use public pressure to shame, silence, and destroy critics of Israeli and American policy.
Joseph Pierce, a Stony Brook University professor who attended graduate school at UT, also said the escalation was an unusually “drastic response to students advocating for an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
“It is a response that did not occur when in 2005 we protested the anti-gay marriage bill; in the late 2000s when we protested anti-immigration bills; in the 2010s when we protested the open-carry bill,” Pierce said. “It is a clear attempt at silencing Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish voices.”
Hundreds of local and state police — including some on horseback and holding batons — bulldozed into protesters, at one point sending some tumbling into the street. Officers pushed their way into the crowd to make at least 20 arrests.
A photographer covering the demonstration for Fox 7 Austin was in the push-and-pull when an officer yanked him backward to the ground, video shows. The station confirmed that the photographer was arrested. A longtime Texas journalist was knocked down in the mayhem and could be seen bleeding before police helped him to emergency medical staff.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/california-campus-arrests-gaza-protests-00154268
Nice!
It’s definitely spreading across the nation.
UT too.
Some ugly video of the police brutality:
BBC’s current compilation:
Looks like the first graduation ceremony to be cancelled as a result:
I think Emory is the first campus for rubber bullets and tear gas:
The APD claims they did not use rubber bullets, but given their intense hatred of Cop city protesters, I’m doubtful of their claims… Here is a pic from the set WABE had…
I’m not sure if that’s for rubber bullets or pepper balls…
Looks like they had APD, including SWAT team, state Troopers, but I’m not sure if they had Dekalb Co police involved (since Emory is in unincorporated Dekalb) or campus police.
Okay, yeah, campus police were there…
More local coverage…
You can see them using fucking TASERS on these kids…
[eta]
This is all of a piece, authoritarian crushing under the boot heel for any subset of people who dare think they should have human and civil rights too.
