With the greenlight of Columbia President Minouche Shafik and her administration, NYPD has entered Hind Hall through the windows and begun to mass arrest students inside. Let this be remembered as Columbia and Shafik’s legacy: one of mobilizing the violence and terror of the state against their own students and faculty, solely to prevent an end to Columbia’s complicity in a genocide.

Source

  • Nobody@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    They took Occupy in the night, too. Coordinated strike on the remaining camps. It always comes down to the government’s monopoly on violence.

    The Panthers were right. Revolutionaries should be armed.

      • Nobody@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Maybe. It’s also possible that the administration would have negotiated a settlement with the protestors to avoid escalation.

          • Soup@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            If they ever descalate they may find themselves living in the system they created and whoa-ho do I kinda get why they’re so goddamn afraid of that. If only they hadn’t made it so awful down here.

    • JayleneSlide@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The Panthers were right. Revolutionaries should be armed.

      If I recall correctly, the tenet was that every movement needs a non-violent faction and a radicalized faction. The non-violent faction is the carrot to the radicalized faction’s stick. A comparison might be labor unions: unions are supposed to be a reasonable compromise to managers not getting dragged out of their houses and beaten to death in the middle of the night (or assassinated in other ways). See: Renault CEO Georges Besse.

      Unfortunately, so many pro-citizen, pro-labor movements have been overrun by the “strictly non-violence!” mindset and thereby defanged. Additionally, we’re the labor, for fuck’s sake! We could absolutely hit every oligarch and politician right where it hurts, yet here we are.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Everyone remembers either MLK or Malcolm X, but both were needed for the success of the civil rights movement.

    • Icalasari@fedia.io
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      8 months ago

      However, the steady escalation from peace is good. When it eventually gets to violence, people can point back and go, “We tried peace, they kicked our faces in. They started the escalation, we’re just responding in kind”

        • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Who should then? Puppy murdering congresspeople? It’s a nationwide issue and the president is a nationwide authority. I think that it’s mostly his silence and support for Israel that sparked those protests

        • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          How is it weird? These people are specifically protesting some of the actions of the presidential administration. He needs to address it.

          • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            So then they should take their protest to the correct place? And not a private institution with nothing to do with presidential decisions.

            If what you’re saying is true, then the protest is a huge “sir, this is a wendy’s.”

            • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
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              8 months ago

              I feel you might be missing the point of the protest. They want to get the message out and they did on a global level. There are stories reporting this. Hell I don’t know if you knew it, but we are talking about it right now.

              People are forgetful and you have to keep bugging them for change to happen. You need to make it difficult to ignore, or else you will be ignored.

        • Woozythebear@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I like how when Biden is in office he doesn’t have the power to do anything other than eat toast and pass the time but apparently if Trump is president he has the power to end democracy as we know it.

          Which is it?

          • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            Well, I’m not jumping in to support either of these ideas, but I will say that both of those could be true. Historically the democrats play by the rules, to their own demise, while republicans break every rule they think they can get away with.

            Don’t be lulled into complacency by liberals going mad over trump. All of the “he’s a hitler, no HE’S the next hitler! Hey, that guy is hitler!” and the “these masks are fascism!” And the “socialized medicine is fascism!” has desensitized us to the actual calls of fascism.

            But it’s still entirely plausible. Humans have gone through cycles of general peace and prosperity and the worldwide rise of authoritarian movements sprouting up simulataneously. I gotta refind the article I read about it years ago, but it’s clear to see it’s happening again. Germany, Poland, Italy, India, Philippines, China, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, France…I’m forgetting a few others, but authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. We’re incredibly vulnerable right now.

            So it’s entirely possible that any US president could end democracy as we know it. Especially right now. But at the same time, the president doesn’t have power over the nypd. So…yeah.

            Then again, Biden is complicit in genocide. There’s no getting around that. But unfortunately our choice is that, or roll the dice on letting someone who openly says they would be an authoritarian with a party behind them willing to break the system to stay in power. (And eill also more enthusiastically and ruthlessly participate in genocide. The US is in bed with Israel, not just one president. Have been for quite a while.) Yeah, shit sucks. But here we are.

          • treefrog@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            Basically, it’s whoever packs the Supreme Court and Congress gets shit done.

            That’s what makes Trump dangerous and why Dems haven’t gotten much done in three terms.

            But I doubt it was an honest question anyway, so don’t bother replying.

            It’s also kinda beside the point here. I don’t believe Biden has any intention of stopping violence against the protesters. Regardless of political ability, I don’t believe there’s political will considering his stance on Gaza/Israel.

          • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            This is how it always is with every president. While campaigning, they need to do everything under the sun and you need to elect them to do that, then once elected… oh snap, they just don’t have the power to do those things, ah shucks.

          • pop@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            Which is it?

            whichever conveniently deflects responsibility of bad actions and take responsibility of good ones.

  • tearsintherain@leminal.space
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    8 months ago

    Columbia University’s Shafik, the Neoliberal https://www.salon.com/2024/04/28/columbia-crisis-another-massive-failure-of-liberalism/

    “If you wanted to choose one individual as the face of “neoliberalism” for an encyclopedia entry, you could do a lot worse. Shafik holds an economics PhD from Oxford and a résumé of high-ranking positions at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, three institutions that have been instrumental in driving developing nations into unsustainable debt in pursuit of a disastrously failed model of progress. She came to Columbia after six years of pushing fiscal austerity as director of the London School of Economics, where just last spring she helped defeat a student/faculty strike, reportedly by slashing salary payments and lowering graduation requirements to hustle student protesters out the door.”

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I don’t know why this is downvoted. I guess people just have believed the neoliberal lie that peaceful protest accomplish anything. Things get accomplished when there’s violence. The reason you aren’t all locked onto an assembly line in a factory somewhere from age of 8 to 80 is because your ancestors had guns and fought. It wasn’t peaceful. There was a war we fought.

    • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The protestors shouldn’t be breaking into buildings and barricading themselves in them.

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            oooh, no! criminal breaking and entering!

            at least funding genocide is ok though, it aint a crime!

            • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Were these people also committing genoside? I was only commenting about their illegal actions.

                • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Well I was specifically bothered about the illegal activities they’re using to protest, but sure, twist my words to fit your narrative.

            • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Look at you attempting to be all passive aggressive. We all know you try really hard behind your keyboard. Maybe one day you can even talk to a person without hiding your identity.

                • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I actually try having discussions here, despite the tons of misinformation that flows through lemmy. That person literally had nothing to contribute beyond passive aggressive comments.

  • blahsay@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I read the stats on how little America students care about the Gaza conflict but then you look at lemmy and every post is about these small protests.

    The islamic/tankie propaganda teams are working hard on this.

  • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    NYPD going in through the windows is much better than a bunch of protestors breaking down the doors and locking themselves in there.

  • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    This protest is not a thing that matters. No one will remember this in a year, probably less than that. Because you can’t just break random rules as a protest. You have to break the specific rule that is unjust. This building is not the center of Israeli government or the IDF.

    If these students went downtown to the Holocaust museum and held up signs saying “Gaza is a modern Holocaust”, that would work better. They could protest outside the Israeli Consulate too. It would also be more efficient to just call a bunch of representatives and senators every day. Get 100 students to spend one hour making calls per day and you can tie up the Congressional switchboard. Do that for a month and you will get a response.

    These students are mainly protesting to feel good about themselves. They are taking the easiest and coolest route. Actually organizing for change is tougher than just occupying your own school. It’s your school, you aren’t taking it from anyone.

    • Philharmonic3@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      These protests have a list of specific demands, especially a demand to divest Columbia’s money from arms manufacturers supplying the genocide. Do not infantilize this. It is an organized maneuver with a specific goal.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Columbia was founded by slavery money. Most Ivy League schools are. They weren’t clean before and divesting from arms manufacturers is not going to make them clean.

        Did these students care about that when they enrolled? No, they were all excited to go to a “good school” to get a high paying job. They don’t care about the investments. This is just a thing to do.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      objection

      I’d like to present this piece of evidence: MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail! In particular, I believe this section is most relevant:

      First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

      I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

    • z00s@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I have been trying to verbalise this for a while. Thank you for this comment, it’s a perfect explanation and precisely encapsulates how I feel about these protests.

      I agree with their intention, but they’re not actually helping their cause.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I have been trying to verbalise this for a while.

        Sometimes it’s better to remain silent and let people think you are a fool than to speak your mind and remove all doubt.

        • z00s@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          You don’t seem to understand the nuance of the situation; are you interpreting my comment as meaning that I don’t support Palestine?

          I think you may need to re-read the initial comment that I replied to.

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I’m interpreting your comment as meaning you agree with the person you responded to, who entirely mischaracterized the protests and the protestors and painted a picture that can only be described as lying.

            • z00s@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I don’t think that the comment I replied to was really doing that. I’m on mobile so I can’t check right now

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Says a random person on the internet that did fuckall for Palestine in their entire life.

    • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Breaking and entering has never been a form of protest that’s acceptable. At this point the protest has just devolved into doing everything they can to get arrested like that.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        No they just want to be cool and have control over some part of their lives. Like we all do. I completely understand but it’s not an effective way to protest.

        Breaking and entering can easily be a good form of protest but it matters where you break into. The Jewish dude who broke into an American Nazi meeting in Madison Square Garden was a great protester.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden

        • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          No they just want to be cool and have control over some part of their lives.

          They’re protesting about someone else’s lives, not their own. Last I checked this isn’t Vietnam where those same students are being conscripted to fight a war.

          Breaking and entering can easily be a good form of protest but it matters where you break into.

          Breaking into a random building is not a good form of protest. I would even argue your example isn’t great either, nor really a protest.