Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/30/columbia-university-shuts-down-as-protestors-barricade-inside-building-video.html
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My parents attended Sir George Williams University in Montreal in the mid-1960s.
A somewhat similar occupation at SGWU in January 1969 did not end peacefully.
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if the students want to lose all credibility and damage their support, breaking into campus buildings and occupying them will certainly do it. that is the opposite of peaceful protesting. i guess they never learned from history.
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The peace was already broken, not by the students. How come that hasn’t robbed the administration and police of all credibility and damaged their support? We leave it up to youth to do what they’re told at all times while letting their rights be trampled on?
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Huh? “Occupying” buildings that were open to them as students days ago? That their tuition money helped build and maintain?
I mean, set aside the 1A rights being violated; they are residents of the campus. Those building belong more to the students than the administration.
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So genocide is OK, but property damage is unforgivable?
Fuck this, the status quo is morally bankrupt. When does the revolution start?
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It’s always the right thing to stand up for oppressed people, especially when they’re being genocided. Always.
The Civil rights movements employed many techniques that were transgressive and disruptive. They were not peaceful, in the sense that they bothered no one and broke no laws. They broke ALL kinds of laws and bothered millions of white people.
Let’s not even get into civil rights uprisings like Stonewall. There is little doubt that the queer community who rebelled against their oppression were in the right.
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They did learn from history. They were inspired by history.
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If there’s any lesson to be mindful of here, it’s that virtually everyone who ever tried to shut down a college student protest championing civil rights at home and abroad ended up on the wrong side of history.
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Casualties for the Ukraine war, though of course, we can’t and won’t know the real numbers until the conflict concludes…
If there are more Russian soldiers dead, that’s hardly the fault of the people defending their country, BTW. That’s on Putin. And there was little need to protest the lack of arms, because it was not an official position of the US government to deny those arms, but of right wing, fascist aligned members of the GOP… the administration and the Democrats and even many republicans WANT to support the Ukrainians.
And far more people have been killed in a shorter period of time than Ukraine. Genocidal numbers of women and children have been wiped off the face of the earth. But please let me know why European lives matter more than Palestinian lives? Is it okay to genocide Palestinians for some reason? Because basic humanity tells me that’s not cool at all. And youngsters coming out in support of a people who’ve been systematically disenfranchised for going on 8 decades now seems to me the right call for young people looking to improve the world. A world without anyone being genocided is a BETTER FUCKING WORLD. I don’t see what’s controversial about that position.
That really is a very simplistic way to look at how social media and disinformation actually is perpetuated.
Except they push narratives on boths ends of the political spectrum, in order to push the most dischord. They are actively pushing both left and right wing views, because the goal is chaos, and they like Trump only because he represents the most chaotic option that will do the maximum damage to American politics.
But that doesn’t mean nodding sagely at how “wrong the children are” to be pissed about genocide is correct. BOTH things can be true. Trump sucks and GENOCIDE FUCKING SUCKS. FDR, one of our greatest presidents was also wrong on dealing with Germany when HE KNEW what they were up to prior to our getting pulled into the war. He should have opened the doors to as many Jews (and Roma/Sinti, and LGBQT+ people, and Slavs, and political dissidents, etc) as possible, but like much of the west, he did not. Blood was on his hands for that too.
Yeah, not like he wasn’t a leader in the senate for years with a very hardline on support for Isreal for literally decads, after all. He just showed up as VP and then President one day, and didn’t have a very active career in the senate at all… 
And not like he continues to send arms to a state committing Genocide or anything…
Um… yeah, people HAVE, for literally years. Not sure where you’ve been, but there was a whole ass book about AIPAC a few years ago. In addition, people have been working on this issue for decades, trying to make a Palestinian state a reality. Both Carter and Clinton made real progress on this issue, before the Israeli hard right marched in and scuttled all their work (especially Clintons). So, no, it’s not just AIPAC that’s the problem here.
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The most important thing in the world
isn’t a viscous black ocean
or a million dead children.
The most important thing in the world
isn’t the world’s biggest con game and its three billion marks
The most important thing in the world isn’t four goals to one
but you knew that already
Or a country of ruined buildings broken limbs after six months of rot
Or anything else you might have had on your mind the last time you decided to feel something between commercials
Everyone knows
The most important thing in the world
Is a shopkeeper’s window.
— Nick Mamatas (2010)
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Really? You find it suspicious that the students didn’t feel the need to protest something that the government was pushing for, only something the government has been pushing against? That’s a subtle distinction to you?
Biden is hardly to blame for 75 years of American aid to Israel, but anyone who claims he hasn’t been going out of his way to help them in spite of their massive violations of international law and war crimes is lying. And sorry, but the thousands of deaths and ongoing genocide are part of the big picture too. There is more to the world than just Trump vs. Biden; they deserve all the opposition they can have.
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That’s funny…Russia and China weren’t anywhere in this topic, but you decided to make the context about them to suit a narrative too. The narrative of course being the perennial favorite of but the people opposing atrocities aren’t doing it exactly the right way.
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That’s just really naive about how American foreign policy works and has worked for decades. American politicians aren’t just puppets of some shadowy organization (AIPAC or George Soros, take your pick, I guess). There are reasons far more complicated for the unwavering support of Israel.
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It’s terrible. American democracy is at stake, and Biden is risking it to support a fascist war criminal. But this article is about students standing against genocide, not his failure to do so.
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