Protests

[Mike]

Split from World Central Kitchen thread.

Our right to protest has been slowly undermined for decades. Protesters are always labeled as troublemakers, rioters, looters, criminals. Sen. Tom Cotton recently called for people facing protesters to "take the law into their own hands". If they're blocking a bridge in MY state, then a lot of those criminals are going to end up in the water. If they glue their hands to a car or the pavement, then their going to be hurting when all that skin is torn off of them. Take matters into your own hands! And yet it was Rashida Tlaib who was sanctioned for advocating violence because she said "from the river to the sea." While another congressperson that week advocated for turning Gaza into a parking lot, but nothing happened to him, because apparently that doesn't imply violence.

More and more, conducting a protest requires getting permits and/or being in properly designated protest zones. If you want to protest at the RNC or DNC, the designated "protest zones" are down the block and around the corner so that you don't disturb people coming in and out of the event. Except that the whole point of protest is to disturb people! You have to get their attention. How can you do that when the only people who visit your protest zones are reporters who just want sound bites for however they decide to portray you in their media?

More and more they want to criminalize any disruption of business, anything that upsets or offends people, anything that disturbs their peace. That way any form of protest that actually might affect people can be labeled criminal. Oh, we don't mind if you protest--you just have to do it the "right" way. Yeah, ask Colin Kaepernick what the right way to protest is. Ask the BLM movement in Ferguson.

But I suppose people in authority have always sought to treat their opposition this way, regardless of any constitutional guarantees of freedom to assemble, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. All the "great" protests of history involved people willing to upset the powers that be and willing to serve jail time to defy unjust laws. The Google employees who went on strike to protest Google providing material support to Israel's efforts in Gaza? Yeah, refused to work and refused to leave until Google met their demands. Google fired them. They still refused to leave. Google had them arrested and dragged away. Fuckin heroes.

[Mike]

A coalition of student groups at Columbia University in New York organized a protest on campus. Their chief demand: Israel is an apartheid state, and they believe it is against Columbia's own code of ethics to support such a state, and thus they want Columbia to divest from all Israeli investments.

They set up in the campus's designated protest area. They were entirely peaceful. But out of "an overabundance of caution for the safety of the campus, its students..." etc, the administration demands they leave. The students say it is their campus and their free speech. They're not leaving. The university calls in NYPD to arrest all of them for trespassing.

[Kyle]

Fucking ridiculous. So now if you’re critical of Israel killing Gazans, then you’re a safety risk and not allowed to exercise your first amendment rights. Fucking bullshit.

[Mike]

Exactly. The government can shut down free speech if it is deemed dangerous. And in this case, it's being shut down on the sliver of a possibility of danger. But is it that the protesters themselves are dangerous? Or is this "overabundance of caution" because we're afraid extremists will be drawn to the protest (for or against) and will put people in danger?

I would hate to see a situation where bringing violence to protests you disagree with is a solid way to give cover to anyone needing reason to shut that speech down.

[Mike]

Today, Texas state troopers in full riot gear were sent onto the UT campus in Austin to break up a peaceful protest.

[Phoebe]

Oh Lord. I am trying to keep an eye on how the universities are handling these situations because it is instructive, but have been too busy with work things to follow along. What I do know so far is a lot of places have botched the response wildly - Columbia & Texas in particular. It appears Columbia is doing its level best to offend and violate the rights of as many people as it can, given what I'm reading - they lumped the peaceful students in with outside agitators who were harassing people, and they encouraged Jewish students to attend classes remotely because of security concerns or something, thus treating them like some type of second-class citizen at the school. I can't figure it all out yet but the President also gave fairly terrible testimony in Congress. I sympathize because she was dealing with a bad-faith questioner, but she also needed to come back and stand on her facts, which she did not. It should have been pretty easy to deal with the questions I saw because they were so off-base, yet she punted when she should have had the upper hand. Not sure what to make of it all. The Texas thing just seemed like wild overreach as not much was happening and they went in with the national guard anyway. First rule would be to let situations like this defuse themselves rather than escalating and making it A Bigger Thing.

[Mike]

No way. It's too late for that. The establishment has decided the best course is to try to strongarm these kids into silence. Columbia fucked up everyone's chances at letting it blow over by sending in the cops and setting the tone for others. All it did was embolden people and bring more protesters to the front lines.

Governors and University presidents are calling in militarized police to disperse and arrest peaceful students. They say it's because of potential danger or because they are disrupting university functions. But none of the pro-Israel protesters are getting hauled out in cuffs.

And to think, just five years ago, Governor Abbott of Texas proudly filmed himself signing a student freedom of speech bill, ensuring that all college students in Texas could freely assemble without a permit, that they could distribute materials about their cause, and that there would be severe penalties for government or college staff who interfered with these rights. Sure, critics argued that it was just a door to allowing hate speech and white supremacy onto campuses, but Abbot's administration insisted that no voice should be restricted.

[Phoebe]

I haven't yet seen what happened in Texas. I did watch the Emory video and honestly the protestors fought the police and that isn't going to fly in Atlanta. They were not students and were trespassing so they were removed by the actual police as soon as they came in to set up the encampment protest. They were protesting right by campus security office and refused to leave so, unfortunately that's what will happen. There's also no way that school in particular would tolerate non-students creating some incident on campus. Security is always higher due to CDC, I'm guessing.

[Mike]

Every protest of this size and scope will have the possibility of violence, and moreso as arrests start and law enforcement starts roughing up people. But I feel like the amount of violence is really irrelevant, because I'm sure by now, the Fox News narrative is that violent protesters are spilling out of every major learning center, and rioting and looting can't be far behind.

[Mike]

Escalated now to tear gas, rubber bullets, and tasers to disperse protesters at Emory College in Atlanta, GA. Eyewitnesses report that students of color, and particularly Black students, bore the brunt of police aggression.

The college administration explained that non-atudenta were the ones setting up camps, and that's why they called in the cops. Technically, they were still students, many from Emory but also many from other nearby colleges who had all coordinated for a single large protest. But that's irrelevant to the fact that nothing justifies this level of violence against constitutionally protected (peaceful) assembly and speech.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson commented regarding Columbia: "If this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the national guard.”

So "we are being loud and disruptive until our demands are met"--the definition of protest--is now "threats and intimidation" that warrant suppression by the military.

[Phoebe]

I don't doubt that some of these protests are being broken up with excessive police aggression, but at Emory it certainly was a mixed bag with protestors initiating the violence themselves. They are setting up for end of term events on the quad and the campus security was tasked with keeping the protesters out of certain areas, as is reasonable. This is all happening in an immediate area on the lawn where they have museums with valuables that require additional security, and it's not far from the CDC where they already have additional security and assembly (or even driving a vehicle in) is limited for good reasons. They have been dealing with this for years because for a while it was PETA causing much of the issue.

So initially, they had protesters come in from off-campus, and part of the reason they're doing it there is hostility against the pre-eminent scholar of Holocaust studies, Deborah Lipstadt. She has been targeted for years and it's intense right now. That is unfortunate and makes me kind of ill but there it is. These things need to be said because it's disgusting and part of the anti-Semitism in these protests, no matter how righteous the cause may be in other respects. Campus security attempted to keep the protesters on the lawn and out of buildings and other areas where they had equipment out. This is totally reasonable yet the protestors did not listen to this and that is why the actual police were called.

I am in no way excusing the excessive force the ATL police use but that is how they operate all the time - not just with protesters but whenever. So the protesters confronted campus security - who are a whole different group of polite, patient people - and ended up with actual police who did not take kindly when they resisted arrest. And they did resist arrest - not just in the fake way police claim for no reason, but they fought with police and it was a chaotic scene. I am glad it didn't end in an even worse way, as I think some of the problem was caused by people with no understanding of how police function, wandering out of their ivory tower (literally) and thinking they can start interfering with the police on intellectual principle. The chair of the philosophy department and some theology scholars were arrested because this happened right outside their doorstep and apparently they thought it was wise to wander through when the Atlanta police showed up. I do not understand this, and I have sympathy for them because they were certainly completely non-violent, but the protesters who had assembled were actively attacking the police, violently, and that is not a great place to wander in for observation. The police were being smashed against a set of doors and you know, it was wrong at the Capitol bldg and it's wrong here too. It's not just a one-way street, in other words.

[Phoebe]

This is what the university President had to say about it and it conforms with what other witnesses who saw it reported - tbh I am surprised that there was not more violence used to subdue these protesters when they were throwing things at police and trying to break into a building. (See also the part about the vandalism and the hate messages - part of the context people might not see on TV is that Jewish scholars and students at Emory have been harassed as well):

"The encampment that was set up yesterday in the early morning on the Quad in front of the Commencement stage was quickly cleared by law enforcement and a number of arrests were made. Following these events, students gathered outside Convocation Hall to organize a protest. Throughout the afternoon, Emory students and community members assembled peacefully on the Quad. The afternoon events were monitored by open expression observers and Emory Police Department (EPD) officers were on site to provide support as needed.

Early yesterday evening, a large group of protestors left the Quad and gathered outside the Candler School of Theology. Some protestors pinned police officers against the building’s glass doors, threw objects at them, and attempted to gain access to the building. These actions against officers prompted an increased law enforcement presence on campus. Protestors then returned to the Quad and eventually dispersed. No further arrests were made.

I am saddened by what took place at Emory yesterday. To watch these highly organized, outside protestors arrive on campus in vans, construct an encampment, and overtake the Quad just days after it was vandalized with hateful and threatening messages was deeply disturbing. I also know that some of the videos are shocking, and I am horrified that members of our community had to experience and witness such interactions. The fact that members of our community were arrested upsets me even more and is something that I take very seriously. To the best of our ability, we are working with law enforcement agencies to assist detained community members and expedite their release."

[Mike]

Goddam Antifa!

[Mike]

Okay, I've done a dozen searches for elements of your quote there, and I can't find that quote from Fenves. If you've still got the link, that would be awesome.

And I've done a bunch of searches about the confrontation at Candler Seminary, and I have found where the protesters marched to the seminary building, thus prompting an increased police presence and stand off, but none of them detail the pinning of officers to the building or what was thrown and in what context. Right now all I'm seeing is the guy bonking the cop on the head with a giant water cooler type water bottle at Cal Poly. But with that many people, there will be video somewhere to help sort this out.

Granted, all my searches took maybe 15-20 minutes total, and I don't usually look past the first dozen results, so I'm no expert.

[Mike]

For comparison, on January 6th, when armed people were storming the capitol and literally calling for the deaths of Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi among others, causing $3 million worth of damage and attacking law enforcement officers with actual weapons, the cops arrested exactly 6 people that day.

Unrelated interesting thing, yesterday was one year to the day of the time Emory College called in cops to arrest students who were protesting the funding of Cop City in Atlanta.

[Mike]

I've also seen videos of Cal Poly students putting to good use all those skills learned from a lifetime of active shooter drills in school, barricading the doors and preventing the cops from getting in. I'm sure that annoys the authorities as well.

Cuz then I watch footage of man-on-the-street interviews from 1970 after the Kent State shootings. I've been raised to think that Kent State was a tragedy and a great national shame, but I'm amazed at how many of those interviewed were willing to vehemently state that they wish more protesters had died, because they were clearly asking for it. We're not so evolved from then.

[Phoebe]

Barricading the doors is not merely annoying - it can't be allowed and prevents people who don't want to be there from getting away. They just did this at Emory as well, not only when they were trying to get in the doors the campus security was blocking, but when protesters chanting "from the river to the sea" surrounded the dining hall and people inside and tried to block exits with chairs. Just like the protesters should have their free speech, the people who don't want it should be free to leave. Security is never going to let that go on and they shouldn't.

The whole Emory situation makes me sad and you could see that snowball slowly rolling downhill for so many reasons... Again, they're dealing with an outside group that recently vandalized campus (https://emorywheel.com/graffiti-protest ... buildings/). This is only the latest in decades of incidents of threats and harassment. The far right and the pro-Hamas people particularly dislike Lipstadt, who is Biden's official envoy for dealing with anti-Semitism (the GOP blocked her for a while, except Romney). She goes after Holocaust deniers and more recently testified against Charlottesville neonazis.

Anyway, they've also got sensitive labs and the museum there, and normally campus security would allow protests and it wouldn't be an issue to keep people away from certain areas. But this time, the protesters came from outside and refused to listen to security. You can totally see how confused the people from campus are when they come upon this scene, thinking they're dealing with a security team that normally works for them, respects and knows them, etc. Suddenly it's outside cops and they give no Fs. One professor comes out when this happens right outside her window, is horrified to witness cops violently pinning a guy, and simply says No when they ask her to move. So they arrest her too - she's cool as a cucumber through the whole thing, remarkable person really. One poor woman is thrown to the sidewalk while exclaiming that she's a professor - she clearly thinks it's her role to check on the people being arrested or berate the cops for pinning this guy, and she's so clearly shocked that they react nothing whatsoever like campus security. It's really sad to watch and she's doubtless being hurt badly. I think she's out of jail but they charged her with assaulting an officer. I get emails directly, that's what I'm sharing with you here - there's a regular update and that's part of one email they sent.

In general the whole thing is sad to me because it fuels the ongoing narrative that universities are terrible leftist indoctrination centers, and imo undermines whatever pro-Palestinian people cause they may think they're advancing. No lives were saved here but a lot of bad occurred. Nor is Emory is going to do anything to displease its donors, especially when teams of outside people show up and can't be removed without calling in actual police. That is never going to end well. Meanwhile if they just had normal protests on campus, they would be (and have been) fine. I don't know what is going on elsewhere because I've only followed this one case.

[Mike]

Meanwhile if they just had normal protests on campus, they would be (and have been) fine. I don't know what is going on elsewhere because I've only followed this one case.

So much to digest there, but this one I can respond to right away. Since you haven't been following the other protests, there are 50-60 of them currently at campuses all across the country. Pretty much all of them started as "normal protest" until the cops were called in to disperse protesters (and made arrests at) at least 15 campuses I can identify. Because you can't arrest students for trespassing on their own campus, many schools have taken the position of declaring that all protesting students are suspended, and then send in the cops to arrest them for trespassing. As with most protests, the physical contact with police only starts when the cops begin arrests. And even with that, only 4 cops have been injured with non-life threatening injuries (that was at Emerson, where students used umbrellas to try to hold off police). 20+ students have been injured. Over 540 arrests have been made at last count.

As you said earlier, if the colleges had simply done nothing, this has every chance of fizzling out. But instead, the students found out that even if you do things "the right way", people with money and power will still try to silence you if your message threatens their interests. As usual.

[Kyle]

Students (both high school and college) are supposed to protest. I hope they protest. When you make rules on the "right" and "wrong" ways to protest, you're missing the whole point of protesting. Shut down roads. Shut down schools. DISRUPT. That's the point of a protest. It's not about standing in a designated area to hold up your sign and wish beyond wishes that a national camera will air it. It's about making life uncomfortable for the status quo and forcing people to listen. That's how you protest. You disrupt the normal operations of things so that people must listen to what you have to say. This is what the civil rights movement was about. We didn't make folks have a designated area two blocks from the diner to protest that they wouldn't serve black people- we marched folks into the diner and occupy it. Shut that shit down. That's how you protest.

When does it go to far? When it resorts to violence. Often that violence is instigated by the police. Sometimes it is instigated by the protesters (I'm looking at you, Jan 6ers). Peaceful, disruptive protests are crucial. That's what we want students doing. Honestly, it's what I want everyone doing. The fact that we're still not marching about abortion rights is disheartening to me.

This reminds me of a guy I work with who is an ardent abortion rights supporter. I said, "Well, my family and I are marching on the capital, and next week we're marching through one of the main streets. You should join us." And he said, "You know, I'm not a real 'marching' guy. I think I can more effectively help the cause by giving money to planned parenthood." Right. Okay. So that means you support the cause, but you don't want to "put yourself out there."

I get it. Not everyone is in a position to protest in person. I haven't done so with the current Gaza massacres. But the crackdown on student protests is just so gross to me. This more of the "shut up and get in line" mentality that is so frustrating to me.

[Phoebe]

At Emory they have some people officially designated by the University to facilitate free expression. I don't know what happened yet on the day they called the outside police into campus, or the day they let the students surround the dining hall. Apparently some faculty and students want the president to resign for making the call to bring in the outside police. He is now saying he thought those protesters were the same one who vandalized the campus earlier and had exclusively come from outside the campus. And now he's saying some of them did but some of them didn't, and then of course we've all seen the professors and others being swept up in the arrests, including those who weren't part of the protest.

Apparently they got control of the situation and peaceful protests have been going on ever since that point. They stop people who are trying to f*** with the equipment set up for graduation (they have this whole outdoor staging area), but apart from that they're letting them do what they please. The only time they've had to shut it down is when people came again from the outside to vandalize buildings with spray paint. The students leading the campus protest apparently were the ones who let them know external actors were involved in that vandalism and I think they've made a few arrests. But as far as I know all the charges have been dropped against the people they arrested on campus in the first place. So that's my Emory update and we will see what happens. It is encouraging that at least one of these places that had so much problem seems to have figured out how to allow protest to go on without trying to arrest the students. But we shall see in coming days, approaching graduation, whether that continues. I'm guessing they'll want to clear people completely from that whole area and it's not clear how that will happen.

[Kyle]

An interesting article I read in the Washington Post this morning:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va ... dc-police/

While other police forces are providing highlight reels of enforcers marching on university quads in riot gear (from California to New York, Illinois to Texas) or galloping in on horseback (just Texas), officers carrying and dragging students away or shockingly slamming an Emory University professor to the ground in Georgia, the cops here in the nation’s capital gave the ivory tower a lesson in constitutional rights.

“This activity has remained peaceful,” a D.C. police spokesperson said, explaining why there have been no arrests at the George Washington University campus, despite the administration’s request for backup.

So far, at least 900 people have been arrested on U.S. campuses during protests over Israel’s actions in Gaza. And in nearly every case, the demonstrations were peaceful and nonviolent until law enforcement showed up.

“They definitely made the right call,” said Ivy Ken, an associate professor of sociology at GWU and one of dozens of faculty members who signed a letter protesting the suppression of demonstrations on university campuses in the region and suspension of student protesters.

In most cases, universities are calling police because they have decided that the students who spend major bucks to study on their verdant lawns are now trespassers.

“Their encampment at the plaza does not interfere with the regular operations of the university in any way,” said Dane Kennedy, a professor emeritus of history and international affairs who took part in antiwar protests at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s.

“I applaud the D.C. police for refusing to intervene,” he said. “By the same token, I’m appalled and embarrassed that GW’s administration has expelled peaceful student protesters. It sends a really shameful message about its disdain for students’ rights.”

[Mike]

I hope they don't clear them out, and I also hope they don't cancel.

I'm 100% with Kyle on this. Look back at the protest movements that we as Americans idolize now. Abolitionists, suffragettes, workers rights, civil rights, Vietnam protests, gay rights, BLM, all of these involved people exercising their constitutional 1st amendment rights and being brutalized and arrested by the authorities even when they truly did nothing wrong or illegal. But also, many made a point to intentionally break unjust laws in order to get arrested for same. As Americans, we are fed this idyllic picture of protest movements past (yeah, okay, maybe not BLM so much... too recent,. But it'll get there). But when faces with it in the present tense, people find all sorts of ways to twist it around and justify, "Of course I support their 1st amendment rights, but only if they do it the right way". And of course "the right way" is a moving goalpost. I mean honestly, during BLM it got so far down this rabbit hole that even when Colin Kaepernick brought attention to his cause by kneeling silent and motionless during the anthem, that turns out to be the wrong way as well, because it means you spit on our troops.

The people out there who align themselves with the authorities to fight against student led protests are rarely on the right side of history.

[Akiva]

A student at Columbia is suing the school for failing to provide a safe environment. The student says that anti-Semitic harassments and threats have become very common since the protest started, and she doesn't feel safe going to class.

[Mike]

I have several paragraphs typed up about this, because I'm very interested in what Akiva's take, but I can't get everything quite right, and in the meantime I found this about the clash last night:

UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment Press Release
by SJP at UCLA
Wed, May 1, 2024 6:09AM

April 30, 2024 - The life-threatening assault we face tonight is nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror. For over seven hours, zionist aggressors hurled gas canisters, sprayed pepper spray, and threw fireworks and bricks into our encampment. They broke our barriers repeatedly, clearly in an attempt to kill our community.

Campus safety left within minutes, external security the university hired for “backup” watched, filmed, and laughed on the side as the immediate danger inflicted upon us escalated. Law enforcement simply stood at the edge of the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help. The only means of protection we had was each other. WE KEEP EACH OTHER SAFE.

Despite the danger, we refused to engage standing by the principles of our encampment—self defense. For all the school’s pretense of student safety, we have experienced an unprecedented amount of violence and hatred while they stood by. The university’s hypocrisy all too apparent, as signs of this escalation were reported, documented, and indicated early on. The zionist attacks, their use of chemical weaponry, their hatred, their destruction, are but a microcosm of the genocide in Gaza. The university would rather see us dead than divest. Media portrayal of neutrality and both sides only obfuscates the truth. We have no pepper spray, no gas canisters, no fireworks, and no aggression. All we had was our community to hold our wooden barriers. What more can we do? We ask yet again- no, we demand that the university end this sham. The sham of pretending that the school is neutral- it has chosen genocide before and it chooses genocide again.

Call on UCLA, protect your fellow students, & call for what we need- a divestment from systems of death that profit off of indiscriminate bombing and a call to end the genocide in Gaza & the occupation of Palestine.

In solidarity,
The besieged UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment

[Phoebe]

I saw a little bit of this video and the University in particular and everybody else generally is lucky this didn't go a much worse way, like with a fire breaking out in that place from the fireworks. It seems like they had already decided to break up the encampment with the aid of the California highway patrol, but either campus or private security or police - whoever it was - just stood by as people attacked the encampment from outside and tried to drag people out of it to fight. These people were armed and trying to beat people with sticks. The people in the encampment were throwing things out as well, but everything was quiet until they had been attacked from the outside.

The things happening on different campuses seem quite different, so it's hard to generalize. But at many places when they have started making arrests, there was no violence until the arrests began - IE the violence came from people trying to break up the protest. But they are also finding at least half the protesters are not students at all. It also seemed like many of the counter protesters were not students but were other people coming from outside of campus. The universities can't be a place where people are allowed to stage fights.

After the disastrous results of calling the police on the protest at Emory, they seem to have righted the ship and are doing things in a way that permits protest but also prevents violent conflict from arising. At other schools the faculty and other groups of protest observers and free speech facilitators (they have different names for these things) are helping maintain order without involving police. I'm not clear on how the faculty were involved at Columbia because there is so much dueling crazy information about that one. But at a few other schools like Georgetown and others nearer to me, faculty have formed a peaceful human barrier between protest and counter-protest so that everybody can go about their business and the university is discouraged from violently breaking up the protests.

It's a difficult situation for sure where you want to encourage people to exercise their freedom, but it also seems pretty clear outside forces are trying to manipulate this situation to achieve whatever their ends might be. My concern is that the students and other peaceful actors on the campus must not be hurt in this process. This also includes the students like Akiva mentions who are feeling threatened, or who don't want to be involved in this while being forced into engagement.

[Mike]

The U.S. House is so pro-Israel that they just passed house bill 6090 which defines anti-Semitism to include any criticism of Israel's government. Thus, publicly disagreeing with Israel's actions would now legally be hate speech. Allowing hate speech is grounds for withdrawal of federal funding... We're looking at you, institutes of higher learning.

One hopes that the Senate will reject this, as they did similar bills previously, but with tensions high, who knows. One hopes Biden would veto it in spite of his creepy ride-or-die relationship with Israel. And just a few short years ago, one could have counted the supreme court to quash this nonsense, but that's not true anymore now that they're busy playing footsie with granting presidents full immunity from prosecution.

Seriously, if the House gets it's way, people will be able to criticize our own government all they want, but not allowed to criticize some foreign power? AIPAC has really put in the work.

[Kyle]

The U.S. House is so pro-Israel that they just passed house bill 6090 which defines anti-Semitism to include any criticism of Israel's government. Thus, publicly disagreeing with Israel's actions would now legally be hate speech. Allowing hate speech is grounds for withdrawal of federal funding... We're looking at you, institutes of higher learning.

So I was alarmed by this and decided to dive deeper into what the definition from IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), which was adopted by the House act says, and I'm not quite convinced that either side of this argument is being completely fair. The IHRA definition is:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

Then there are 11 examples of what constitutes antisemitism. This definition and the examples were taken from the EUMC's (European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia) definition and examples. As adopted by the EUMC, including the examples, the EUMC explicitly stated, "However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." Thus, preserving the idea that criticism of Israel, as one would criticize the actions of any other country, is not antisemitic.

So I'm not really convinced this makes criticism of Israel "hate speech" and I'm confident that if it did constitute that- then it's blatantly unconstitutional.

What I think is really going on here is a bunch of virtue signaling and people saying, "You're either with us or against us." It's dumb.

On another note about the protest. I'm sick to my stomach that ALL THE NEWS COVERAGE of the protest treats the protestors as "naïve college kids." It's so patronizing. These are adults. These are voters. These are people as worthy of our consideration as the condescending boomers that populate the new media. It's gross how they're being portrayed.

[Mike]

"However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."

Thank you! I hadn't seen that. I can safely back-burner that worry.

On another note about the protest. I'm sick to my stomach that ALL THE NEWS COVERAGE of the protest treats the protestors as "naïve college kids." It's so patronizing. These are adults. These are voters. These are people as worthy of our consideration as the condescending boomers that populate the new media. It's gross how they're being portrayed.

100%. It really is all "for us or against us". Where's the people explaining how they don't agree with the protesters, but they defend their first amendment rights to do exactly what they're doing?

[Mike]

FWIW, the New York Times gives a timeline of the confrontation at UCLA last Tuesday night (April 30)
They say they reviewed over 100 videos taken of the events and essentially corroborate the story told by the UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment spokesperson in the press release I posted above. The pro-Palestinian protesters did not instigate any violence. The counter protesters attacked and beat people regularly, shot fireworks into the encampment, threw bricks and other items, etc. Law enforcement stood around watching and not intervening for three or four hours, even as protesters were being physically assaulted a few yards from them.

[Mike]

Sorry for so many posts, but it is ongoing and evolving.

Remember how the IDF went into the bombed out hospital and showed us "evidence" of Hamas terrorists that justified their attacks? The showed a grid on the wall with the names of guards and their shifts for guarding hostages. But Arabic speakers saw immediately that it was just a calendar and the 'names' were days of the week. Plus that pristine copy of Mein Kampf showing how even the children are being indoctrinated. All of this to sow doubt and justify the killing of Palestinians.

Okay, so now Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry of the NYPD made the rounds of Fox News and News Max and other conservative outlets explaining the frightening reality that these supposedly peaceful campus demonstrations are actually motivated by outside agitators or possibly some nefarious mastermind behind the scenes. As proof he shows off a book titled "Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction" that was found in Columbia's Hamilton Hall. Frightening! And thus the implication is that the violent arrests of peaceful protesters was justified.

Except that a simple Google search of the book reveals that it is a textbook for a course on the history of terrorism. But Kaz knew that, because of course he could have just flipped through a handful of pages to discover that fact. So how he or the PR people behind this thought no one would notice is beyond me. Except they probably knew they'd be caught and didn't care. All they have to do is embed this narrative in the minds of a bunch of people who won't fact check it because it aligns with their worldview, and now they've sown enough confusion to make the truth unimportant.

[Mike]

Last Wednesday, the protesters and the authorities had different accounts of what happened, and it turned out the protesters were much more accurate. I imagine the same will be true in this instance.

[Phoebe]

Yep, It was lucky they had such good video coverage of what happened last week because it made really clear that everything was quiet and the violence was completely started and continued by the off-campus group that came in to attack the protesters. And it captured both these people using sticks to beat anybody they could access, and law enforcement or campus security or whoever that was just standing there watching idly.

What's happening at UCLA is truly scary and not only is the University failing to control it, but they seem to be making the problem much worse. I've heard maybe this is a problem with the administration opposing what everybody else on campus is saying to do? I don't know though, the information has been a bit confusing. I do know there's a huge group of California University faculty opposing all of this response and trying to give support to the students.

Another aspect of this I find scary is that depending on how functional Trump is leading into the election, We might see protests and violence related to our own precious little democracy even before the election happens, and certainly after it happens. I mean at this point we have to assume there's going to be something no matter what. So we're getting a preview of how this happens in a protected microcosm where normally students are given privileges they wouldn't enjoy elsewhere.