Speaker 1: Also media, welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison
Speaker 1: Davis and once again it has been happening here as
Speaker 1: protest encampments have sprung up in at least eighty college
Speaker 1: campuses all across the country as Israel continues its genocide
Speaker 1: of the Palestine people and is now currently bombing multiple
Speaker 1: sides of Rafa. Last month, students at American universities began
Speaker 1: protesting their university's ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers, calling
Speaker 1: for divestment, as well as urging their institutions to join
Speaker 1: in calls for ceasefire. After a militarized police raid at
Speaker 1: the Humboldt protest utilizing a prison swat team, police departments
Speaker 1: around the country began cracking down more harshly on the
Speaker 1: protest encampments. The day after the Humboldt, one, NYPD raided
Speaker 1: Columbia University and fired a gun inside Hamilton Hall while
Speaker 1: trying to use their handgun as a flashlight. The Portland
Speaker 1: Police Bureau quickly followed suit and cracked down at the
Speaker 1: encampment at Portland State University and have since barricaded that library.
Speaker 1: As the time of recording, around twenty five hundred arrests
Speaker 1: have taken place at college protests all around the country.
Speaker 1: Police have displayed incredible violence, sending people to the hospital
Speaker 1: with broken ankles and concussions. In many cities, there's been
Speaker 1: heavy use of pepper spray, pepperballs as well as tasers.
Speaker 1: The protests have also faced violence from a mix of
Speaker 1: far right agitators, zionist counter protesters, and racist frats that
Speaker 1: have targeted the protest encampments with physical violence. Especially at UCLA.
Speaker 1: We here it could happen here, are lucky enough to
Speaker 1: have correspondence kind of based all around the country. So
Speaker 1: I'm joined today by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Molly
Speaker 1: Konger to discuss our experiences as people who have been
Speaker 1: present at some of these encampments all across the country.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start by talking about Emory University here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a weird one, and I
Speaker 1: think I'll actually go into more depth in a future episode,
Speaker 1: but this episode's going to kind of focus on discussions
Speaker 1: and we're going to kind of compare our experiences. So
Speaker 1: oddly enough, I think Emory was the first one to
Speaker 1: actually face significant police repression. Tents went up on the
Speaker 1: Emery Quad on April fifteenth, and that morning there was
Speaker 1: a heavy police response from EMORYPD, APD and Georgia State Patrol.
Speaker 1: They fired tasers, there was rubber bullets, pepper balls, and
Speaker 1: over two dozen arrests. Students and others began to rally
Speaker 1: later that afternoon to retake the quad. A few hundred
Speaker 1: people did so, and a small occupation began inside the
Speaker 1: Kendler School of Theology building. M REPD was pinned up
Speaker 1: against this building. GSP arrived as reinforcements and people started
Speaker 1: to flee as you know, you see GSP kind of
Speaker 1: form this area. But people were able to calm some
Speaker 1: of those other students down and regroup and actually hold
Speaker 1: that position for a little while longer police began attacking students,
Speaker 1: a small clash began, there was pepper balls. People continued
Speaker 1: to kind of hold that ground in front of the building.
Speaker 1: There was students also inside. As people try to you know,
Speaker 1: render aid to those who have been pepper bald, and
Speaker 1: while maintaining this position in front of the building, more
Speaker 1: and more police arrive, like a ridiculous number, and the
Speaker 1: crowd eventually starts to slowly disperse as police just flood campus.
Speaker 1: Police from all around the greater Atlanta area just flood
Speaker 1: this very small section of Decatur, which is a small
Speaker 1: suburb to the northeast of Atlanta or to the east
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. I guess. Emory President Greg Fems said the
Speaker 1: Thursday protest was concocted by outside entities, which is why
Speaker 1: Emory PD, APD and GSP violently disrupted the protest because
Speaker 1: it was caused by outside agitators. Line that New York
Speaker 1: Mayor Eric Adams would then reiterate to justify the massive
Speaker 1: crackdown at Columbia. So the next day we had five
Speaker 1: undred people march around campus and then this little kind
Speaker 1: of committee of Emory faculty and staff called it the
Speaker 1: emvery Open Expression Committee, began to negotiate with the protest
Speaker 1: and they quote unquote allowed the protest to march around
Speaker 1: campus and this small subset of the group began to
Speaker 1: occupy the Cox Hall food court, and police were ordered
Speaker 1: to stay out of sight this whole day and a
Speaker 1: few of the days after unless the Open Expression Committee
Speaker 1: specifically called them in. And what was able to happen
Speaker 1: is that this Open Expression Committee was able to wield
Speaker 1: the threat of police as a deterrent from people taking
Speaker 1: kind of more militant action or to actually set up
Speaker 1: things that would hold down an encampment, like if tenths
Speaker 1: were set up, this would result in this Open Expression
Speaker 1: Committee to call in the police. So this was a
Speaker 1: very successfully wielded threat. So as the night goes on
Speaker 1: with the Open Xpression Committee does threaten to call police
Speaker 1: on the Cox Food Hall protest, which scares a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of these young teens early twenties out of the building.
Speaker 1: A smaller group of around one hundred people remain on
Speaker 1: the quad till midnight, police arrive, and then everyone disperses.
Speaker 1: The next day kind of follows a similar pattern. Open
Speaker 1: Expression and some student organizers over the course the next
Speaker 1: few days actually start directing police to detain and criminally
Speaker 1: trespass people wearing cafeas on suspicion of them having been
Speaker 1: engaged in like doing graffiti, and really it just allows
Speaker 1: police to target specific people that the Open Expression Committee
Speaker 1: kind of just don't want on campus based on either
Speaker 1: how they dress, how they're kind of walking, acting, behaving
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And this pattern followed basically up
Speaker 1: until the present. People would try to take buildings do
Speaker 1: smaller protests, police would either be called or there would
Speaker 1: be threats that they would be called. It would kind
Speaker 1: of calm the crowd down, everyone would disperse. If ten's
Speaker 1: got set up, that was seen as like a major
Speaker 1: sign of escalation, which would result in police being called.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of the small back and forth. And
Speaker 1: eventually this just kind of led to the situation Emory
Speaker 1: slowly dissolving, slowly fizzling out as the people who were
Speaker 1: wanting to do stuff kind of got pushed more to
Speaker 1: the side, got pushed out, more and more people became
Speaker 1: again getting criminally trespassed, and the group of students at
Speaker 1: Emory just did not want to risk a further engagement
Speaker 1: with police after the first day. That's kind of led
Speaker 1: to things slowly, slowly dissolving, and that's basically with the
Speaker 1: situation currently. Things have mostly kind of tapered off schools ending.
Speaker 1: I'm sure this will be a similar similar thing across
Speaker 1: the country as the school season is ending, and these
Speaker 1: protest encampments will slowly also just dissolve away as police
Speaker 1: repression continues. Let's see, who should we move on to
Speaker 1: the next little report? James James stout from you. You
Speaker 1: went to U see San Diego. That's right.
Speaker 2: I did both, both as a graduate student and then
Speaker 2: again as an adjunct professor, and then again as a
Speaker 2: journalist last week, which is what we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about this time. So you see San Diego had It
Speaker 2: was interesting. The encampment began on the first of May,
Speaker 2: but s JP had posted this thing about their big
Speaker 2: rally was going to be on the.
Speaker 1: Third of May, on the Friday. Right. S JP is.
Speaker 2: Students for Justice in Palestine. It's one of the groups
Speaker 2: it's organized a lot of these protests across It depends
Speaker 2: you know where you're at. You might have the Council
Speaker 2: on American Islamic Relations, you might have the Muslim Student Association.
Speaker 1: You might have both. But yeah, yeah, you're Jewish Fast
Speaker 1: for Peace. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Very often they're they're collaborating, which is great. We love
Speaker 2: to see collaboration. So what they did was they posted
Speaker 2: that they were going to have a big rally on Friday,
Speaker 2: and that, as it turned out, was like a fake out,
Speaker 2: and they actually started their encampment on Wednesday. So they
Speaker 2: distracted ADMIN with that Instagram post, which is pretty clever,
Speaker 2: pretty funny and They began this encampment on Wednesday on
Speaker 2: Library Walk, which is kind of right in the middle
Speaker 2: of UCSD. If people have seen, you know, people will
Speaker 2: be familiar with the UCSD guys le library from the
Speaker 2: film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which played important. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I can see the look of recognition on my colleagues faces.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's the only thing that's ever call that's
Speaker 2: happened at UCSD. So they set up this encampment. It
Speaker 2: wasn't huge, but it was certainly a serious presence, right,
Speaker 2: and they didn't barricade it or sort of it make
Speaker 2: it defensible. That was a conscious choice, right, And they
Speaker 2: did set up a security system whereby they had student
Speaker 2: security people controlling who entered and I guess left the
Speaker 2: encampment if you really wanted to, you could. The cops
Speaker 2: got in right, like it was a waste high vinyl offence.
Speaker 2: But in theory, these people were controlling who went in
Speaker 2: and who went out. Some times these people were asking
Speaker 2: people to sign up on a sheet. I think I
Speaker 2: hope they stopped doing that because obviously that you're sort
Speaker 2: of helping the cops make their prosecution case there. Over
Speaker 2: the next five days, the encampment was extremely peaceful. Right.
Speaker 2: There was a focus among this group on not giving
Speaker 2: any provocation to police or to addmin to any reason
Speaker 2: to evict them. So they had some lectures, some speeches,
Speaker 2: they had some live music, they did some dancing, all
Speaker 2: stuff that like in no way provocation or violent. On
Speaker 2: the fifth of May, a large counter protest was organized.
Speaker 2: Mostly it bought kind of like get off my law
Speaker 2: and boomer types, but then also like some right wing
Speaker 2: streamers Oreo Express or I guess the surviving half of
Speaker 2: Oreo Express, Josh Fulfer was there. I think the guy
Speaker 2: who was first responded to media, Housway or Joe Felix
Speaker 2: was also there. These are right wing streamers that, sadly like,
Speaker 2: if you live where I live, you have to be
Speaker 2: familiar with where they do a lot of border harassment
Speaker 2: to They were obviously trying to film and identify students,
Speaker 2: so I guess this was on the evening of the fifth.
Speaker 2: That evening, the Chancellor Costler sent around an email basically
Speaker 2: saying that what the students were doing was prohibited, that
Speaker 2: the tents were not included in freedom of speech, and
Speaker 2: asking them to disband peacefully. The next morning at about
Speaker 2: five or six in the morning. Literally only hundreds of
Speaker 2: cops from several agencies. Right, the UCPD does not have
Speaker 2: the footprint that we saw. There was California Highway Patrol,
Speaker 2: San Diego Sheriff's Department, and UCPD all in full right
Speaker 2: gear lined up opposite the encampment. They say that they
Speaker 2: asked students to leave and that those who didn't were arrested,
Speaker 2: and when they arrested, obviously like violence was used by
Speaker 2: the police, as always is, the encampment was destroyed. Everything
Speaker 2: that was there was tossed into a dumpster. Some stuff
Speaker 2: was then recovered. I guess there's now a Lost and
Speaker 2: Found people to recover there things like laptops, right, like
Speaker 2: expensive personal items that were swept up. At that point,
Speaker 2: people were arrested and then detained in the Price Center
Speaker 2: at UCSD. The Price Center, if you've not been on campus,
Speaker 2: is like a large shopping mall that also has some
Speaker 2: lecture facilities. But it's where the Panda expresses on campus.
Speaker 1: It's not trapped in with the Panda Express, which is
Speaker 1: a dangerous situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, pandac Express is not operational sadly more it's
Speaker 2: a shame, but it's where they have their dining horn.
Speaker 2: It's like the center of corporate operations on campus. It's
Speaker 2: a very bleak place. So they're trapped in the price center.
Speaker 2: The students around campus, those who are not in the
Speaker 2: encampment then rallied to protect these students and tried to
Speaker 2: block the police from loading them on buses and then
Speaker 2: block the buses from leaving. And that's when we saw
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's department using massive amounts of violence. Right our
Speaker 2: Sheriff's department still carried just like big wooden sticks. They're
Speaker 2: not like the black night sticks you know, with like
Speaker 2: the right angled grip.
Speaker 1: It's just a giant It's just a big wooden baton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the esthetic of our Sheriff's department's right gear
Speaker 2: is consciously or unconsciously something that I associate with the
Speaker 2: civil rights ear and the repression of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 2: Perhaps that's a choice, I don't know. But that was
Speaker 2: when the Sheriff's department started to become violent. That's when
Speaker 2: they brutalized and arrested BIRS list had students. In total,
Speaker 2: sixty five people are arrested. Protests then moved down to
Speaker 2: the two jails, right, we have a different facility. There's
Speaker 2: a men's jenneral at women's jail, and they tend to
Speaker 2: they tend to incartrate trans people with the gender they're
Speaker 2: assigned at birth. I've heard about lots of things that
Speaker 2: happened in those jails that were pretty bad, but I
Speaker 2: haven't been able to confirm them enough that I think
Speaker 2: I'd be comfortable airing them. So people are released, lots
Speaker 2: of them charged with several misdemeanors, trespassing, encroachment, being at
Speaker 2: the scene of a riot, resisting arrest, things like that. Right,
Speaker 2: two members of faculty were also arrested. Forty people were students,
Speaker 2: and at the last time I checked, they hadn't confirmed
Speaker 2: the status of the other twenty ish people. So that
Speaker 2: happened on the sixth yesterday, which was of course the eighth.
Speaker 2: There was a big march about a thousand students. It
Speaker 2: looked like kind of both calling for the UC to
Speaker 2: divest and calling for the UC to drop charges and
Speaker 2: drop academic sanctions. So right now, all the people who
Speaker 2: are arrested are facing interim suspension. They're facing a viction
Speaker 2: from their student housing, which San Diego as we've spoken
Speaker 2: about Brazilion times has an incredibly expensive housing market and
Speaker 2: it's almost impossible to access affordable housing here. And in
Speaker 2: some cases, you know, they're facing serious academic sanctions. It
Speaker 2: could affect the rest of their academic careers. Student workers
Speaker 2: who are arrested also now not being allowed to work
Speaker 2: on campus. So one hundred and eighty three faculty sign
Speaker 2: a letter asking the university to not do that. That
Speaker 2: came out last night, and that's kind of where we're
Speaker 2: at in terms of what's happened to these people. I
Speaker 2: think it's probably worth noting that the U see Riverside
Speaker 2: settled right that they negotiated a settlement. That's in so
Speaker 2: Riverside is north and slightly east of here, east of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles County. You see Riverside is. I don't know
Speaker 2: in terms of student numbers how big it is, but
Speaker 2: they they settled I think on the Wednesday, so it'd
Speaker 2: be made May day, the Friday, made the third. I
Speaker 2: was at the UCSD encampment that day and I heard
Speaker 2: them announce it and there were a side settlement. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to say it didn't achieve some of the
Speaker 2: more radical goals of the student organizing movement not to
Speaker 2: be divestment, to be an academic boycott. They did get
Speaker 2: the university to publish its investments which are linked to
Speaker 2: Israel at least, which is a step. I guess they've
Speaker 2: got a task force. The university is going to be
Speaker 2: very willing to grant you task forces and panels and
Speaker 2: things which can turn your radical aims into a bureaucratic mess. Right,
Speaker 2: And they got the university to look into removing subra
Speaker 2: Hummas from its men use as well.
Speaker 1: Get Yeah, the biggest concession was the Hummers, which isn't
Speaker 1: isn't great?
Speaker 3: Wait that was That wasn't a joke? I thought you
Speaker 3: were joking.
Speaker 2: No no, I'm not joking. No no, no, no, sober
Speaker 2: Hummas was called out by name. They didn't I'm not
Speaker 2: saying the real investment. Yeah yeah, no, no, they're not
Speaker 2: investing from Sabrahama's Molly. They're looking into doing that in
Speaker 2: conjunction with their acquisitions procedure. Yeah, so you know, it's
Speaker 2: a huge dub. I don't want to undermine what these
Speaker 2: people have done. Like's it's scary when the cops come
Speaker 2: to get you. And I understand, but this is a
Speaker 2: sort of visa concessions or university is going to give you. Right,
Speaker 2: you might get a snack task force, and you might
Speaker 2: get they're already publicly available investments listed in one place
Speaker 2: on their website at UCSD. The administration claims that the
Speaker 2: students were unwilling to negotiate. I wasn't able to ascertain
Speaker 2: if what system they had, right, Like I was trying
Speaker 2: to ask if they had delegates or representatives, who are
Speaker 2: going to those being different things, right, who are going
Speaker 2: to negotiate? I was enabled to get a clear answer
Speaker 2: and that they did very clearly publish their demands right,
Speaker 2: And the university doesn't seem to have proceeded to any
Speaker 2: of them. So that more or less is where we're
Speaker 2: at in Sandy. There are ongoing panels and press conferences.
Speaker 2: I'm going to attend one, so it's going to be
Speaker 2: one by faculty tomorrow on the ninth. The faculty have
Speaker 2: also been organizing right in a group called Faculty for
Speaker 2: Justice in Palestine, and they've been organizing. I think it
Speaker 2: was very impressive that they like accepted student leadership and
Speaker 2: didn't try and like, you know, come in and take
Speaker 2: a vanguard role or tell everybody what to do. But
Speaker 2: but there mostly to facilitate the student protest and protect it.
Speaker 2: So they're having a press conference tomorrow, so things that's
Speaker 2: definitely ongoing here. But that's kind of where we're at
Speaker 2: as of today, which is the ninth of me.
Speaker 1: We will be back in here about the happenings in
Speaker 1: Chicago and I believe Richmond Charlotsville after this outbreak. Yeah
Speaker 1: for sobra, I hope probably not Chockolahamas. That's the Chocolahamas
Speaker 1: is a travesty, crime against humanity. All right, we are back.
Speaker 1: I have a big bowl of non sobera chocolate hummus. Actually,
Speaker 1: so fuck fuck all of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the break Garrison got out that chickpeas and
Speaker 2: a blenda is a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: Let's hear from me about what's been happening in Chicago
Speaker 1: where there it's been multiple, multiple of these protest occupations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there's been four occupations so far in Chicago
Speaker 4: that it's it's possible. I don't know. I'm actually kind
Speaker 4: of surprised, Like the University Ofville, NOI hasn't, Like there
Speaker 4: have been a few campuses that I thought would go
Speaker 4: up that haven't. Yeah, So we're gonna talk about three
Speaker 4: of them, because the other one I didn't get to.
Speaker 4: We'll we'll we'll explain why I wasn't at the School
Speaker 4: of the Art Institute one because that's a shit show.
Speaker 1: Sixty eight arrests, Yeah, disaster.
Speaker 4: We will get to that. So the first one I
Speaker 4: was at was at Northwestern, And I think the other
Speaker 4: thing that's important about these encampments is that they're really
Speaker 4: really geographically spread out across the city. So Northwestern is
Speaker 4: not in Chicago, it is in is it a like
Speaker 4: is it a suburb called Evanston? Is a very rich suburb. Okay,
Speaker 4: The other thing we should probably get across this, these
Speaker 4: are the Chicago Campment's all started kind of late into
Speaker 4: this process. They're not there's reasons for this that I
Speaker 4: can't get into, but they're all kind of late comers.
Speaker 4: On April twenty fifth, Northwestern one starts, and it's a
Speaker 4: really chill occupation for the most part. So there's like
Speaker 4: a police raid on night one, but then the kids
Speaker 4: just come back and put all the tents up again.
Speaker 4: And then after that, like the Evanston Police Department is
Speaker 4: a joke, right, Like they're not I mean they've probably
Speaker 4: done terrible things, but like they're they're not They're not
Speaker 4: like the police departments in the rest of the city,
Speaker 4: who are like the guys you teach the CIA how
Speaker 4: to torture people, right, Yeah, and so yeah, I wanted
Speaker 4: to talk a bit about kind of the vibes of
Speaker 4: it because it was it's a very like early occupation
Speaker 4: kind of vibe.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: It's I mean, like I walk in there's it's it's
Speaker 4: a bunch of kids like sitting on tents doing homework.
Speaker 4: People are sleeping, there's like people like eating meals. Everyone's
Speaker 4: really happy.
Speaker 1: Very similar to people just hanging out in the quatt
Speaker 1: Emory and I'm sure many other places around the country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think in everything that that should
Speaker 4: be mentioned is you know, so like obviously these are
Speaker 4: these are proto. These are camps insolidated with Palistin, right,
Speaker 4: so you're you're expecting an internationalistvent this one. Like I
Speaker 4: walked in there and there is a woman on the
Speaker 4: stage in the encampment, will I say stage, and there's
Speaker 4: a woman using their sound equipment, which made you quieter too,
Speaker 4: But was talking about the Zapatistas and this is the
Speaker 4: thing you see over and over and over again. Right,
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, these are about the encampus that I'm
Speaker 4: at art. You know, obviously they're about Palestign. But there's
Speaker 4: this real there's very kind of there's a deep internationalism
Speaker 4: there that's very tangible and powerful. I mean, like you know,
Speaker 4: I was walking through the tamp and I was I
Speaker 4: was like, you know, there are kids like reading on
Speaker 4: the on the lawn and I'm like I'm like pointing out, like, oh, hey,
Speaker 4: this is that's the copy of The Wretched of the
Speaker 4: Earth that I have from college. Like you know, it's
Speaker 4: all stuff like that. It was all very chill. It
Speaker 4: like rained on us, so we spent much time like
Speaker 4: waterproofing tents. I think the interesting things about this is
Speaker 4: that there's a there's a really kind of wild mix
Speaker 4: of people there. It's it's this it's this thing you
Speaker 4: only really get in social movements that are like going
Speaker 4: somewhere where, you know. I mean I was running into
Speaker 4: people from groups like old school, like like I ran
Speaker 4: to someone from Students for a Democratic Society, Like I
Speaker 4: didn't even know that groups still existed, like I thought.
Speaker 4: I think, well, so there there was a second round
Speaker 4: of them in the two thousands, so I thought they
Speaker 4: died after that, but apparently not. You know, so you
Speaker 4: have these mix of people from like groups that everyone
Speaker 4: thought was dead, right, Like, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of sort of very experienced, like student organizers. There's also
Speaker 4: a lot of grad students, which is a dynamic. I
Speaker 4: don't think it's talked about very much because it's not
Speaker 4: It's not just like eighteen year olds. There are a
Speaker 4: lot of people in these camps who have been doing
Speaker 4: this for a very long time. And you know, so
Speaker 4: you have those people, but you also have people who
Speaker 4: just I mean, like I talked to people who this
Speaker 4: was literally their first protest, right It's like the first
Speaker 4: thing that ever hilly they'd ever come out to. And
Speaker 4: you know, there was this very kind of there's this
Speaker 4: very sort of camarader ReVibe. What there wasn't was a
Speaker 4: functional democracy, and that's a very That's the other thing
Speaker 4: about this encampment that was very different than the Chicago one,
Speaker 4: which I'll be getting to in a second. It's like
Speaker 4: they there is this sort of there was this group
Speaker 4: that was negotiating with the administration, and no one could
Speaker 4: really tell what they were doing. Like every once in
Speaker 4: a while representative would come back from them and you'd
Speaker 4: hear something. But in the meantime, everyone is sort of
Speaker 4: running around based on rumors, trying to figure out what
Speaker 4: these people are negotiating. And it turns out what they're
Speaker 4: negotiating is an end to the protests, and basically the
Speaker 4: students like, okay, So there's a complicated set of demands.
Speaker 4: What actually happens is that all of the entire occupation
Speaker 4: is taken down. After a week, it's completely gone. Now
Speaker 4: there's nothing there. What they get from it was the
Speaker 4: university is re establishing an advisory committee on Investment responsibil
Speaker 4: They got like question there's Northwest supposed to answer questions
Speaker 4: about holding some stakeholders which may be disclosure may not be.
Speaker 4: And they got some stuff that like is real from
Speaker 4: for like visiting like Palestinian faculty. But basically they didn't
Speaker 4: get any of the goals of the encampment, right, there's
Speaker 4: no investments. There's you know, a committee that can make
Speaker 4: recommendations about the investment and we'll see if that even happens,
Speaker 4: because that's supposed to be spun out back in the fall.
Speaker 4: So you know, they take down the encampment. They get nothing,
Speaker 4: they get no leverage, and nothing is you know, and
Speaker 4: all of the sort of student negotiators and these negotiators
Speaker 4: tend they you know, Okay, so there are also like
Speaker 4: political splits in the camp right, It's kind of hard
Speaker 4: to get a sense of them just from looking at it,
Speaker 4: but you know, if you talk to enough people, you
Speaker 4: can sort of get the sense of like what the
Speaker 4: splits are. Right, and Northwestern was sort of split between
Speaker 4: like the sort of liberal student negotiators who are from
Speaker 4: a lot of like some of the sort of more
Speaker 4: liberal student organizations, and the people who want to like
Speaker 4: you know, they're sort of like Baximblist radicals and the
Speaker 4: Maximus radicals get out maduvry because there's just not enough
Speaker 4: of them, and so they take the encampment down. And
Speaker 4: the people who were doing the negotiations had this whole
Speaker 4: line by we're building power. This is just the beginning,
Speaker 4: and there's nothing, there's been nothing else.
Speaker 1: They're screwed.
Speaker 4: They lost everything. Their negotiating power is gone. They got nothing.
Speaker 4: So in the wake of this, the University of Chicago
Speaker 4: Encampment starts up Vinaversit of Chicago complete other side of
Speaker 4: the city, like Northwestern is in like the like the
Speaker 4: fucking bougiest, like richest whitest of the like of like
Speaker 4: the North side of Chicago, which is like whether rich
Speaker 4: white people are except I mean, they're not even in Chicago, right,
Speaker 4: They're they're they're literally like they are they are a
Speaker 4: They're a suburb. The University of Chicago, on the other hand,
Speaker 4: is smack dab in the middle of the South side
Speaker 4: of Chicago. There's the Universe city bubble, and then around
Speaker 4: the university this is like the heart, like the heart
Speaker 4: of black Chicago, right, very very different vibe. The other
Speaker 4: thing that's important about this is so the University of
Speaker 4: Chicago occupation starts in the context of the massive raids
Speaker 4: in Colombia, the raid and Humboldt, and very importantly the
Speaker 4: raids in UCLA, and both of both the sort of
Speaker 4: brutal police raid and the like absolute horrowing mass fascist
Speaker 4: attack on the barricades, where you know, you have people
Speaker 4: getting beat up in the middle pipes, they're shooting. They're
Speaker 4: shooting like Fourth of July ass fireworks, like directly into
Speaker 4: into the people on the barricades. They are trying to
Speaker 4: kill the protesters. They beat, They beat a bunch of
Speaker 4: student journalists like half to death. And so University of
Speaker 4: Chicago camp when when I get there, is right in
Speaker 4: the middle of transforming from a kind of like Northwestern
Speaker 4: style everyone's getting along like singing Kumbaya camp to like
Speaker 4: an actual fighting camp. Because I get there and like
Speaker 4: that day I get there at like nine, right three
Speaker 4: hours from when I get there, they were scheduled to
Speaker 4: be a giant rally of like right wing frats that
Speaker 4: is going to go come and attack the encampment. So
Speaker 4: the vibe is extremely different. It is a fighting camp.
Speaker 4: Everyone is preparing to, like, you know, fight for their lives.
Speaker 4: Everyone knows what happened at UCLA, and also everyone knows
Speaker 4: what happened at Northwestern, and people are fucking pissed. People
Speaker 4: are like, I mean, unbelievably angry that then you know,
Speaker 4: then their view is the Northwestern camp sold everyone out, sure,
Speaker 4: and so you know, I mean, And the other thing
Speaker 4: about Chicago that was different from Northwestern is that U
Speaker 4: Chicago had has functional general assemblies. So there are like
Speaker 4: functional democratic meetings where everyone in the camp goes, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to like figure out what we're going to
Speaker 4: do and these meetings are people are not happy with,
Speaker 4: you know, like they're not happy with what happened at
Speaker 4: the Northwestern. They're also like really pissed off at the
Speaker 4: third occupation, which was well, I mean, I guess I
Speaker 4: think that Paul happened in the middle of there. But
Speaker 4: the third occupation was the occupation at the School of
Speaker 4: the Art Institute. The School of the Art Institute is
Speaker 4: literally right in the heart of downtown Chicago, Like it
Speaker 4: is across like it is like across the street from
Speaker 4: Ballennium Park. It is like across the street from like
Speaker 4: the Art Institute of Chicago. It is in like the
Speaker 4: corporate center of Chicago. Sure, so they they they do.
Speaker 4: They do an occupation right and inside of like like
Speaker 4: I think I think they got seven hours in before
Speaker 4: swat teams showed up. They arrest sixty of people. It
Speaker 4: is a brutal raid. They're they're like, the cops are
Speaker 4: beating people with metal bars like it is.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 4: It is fucking terrible.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 1: It is a bunch of SWAT teams beating up art students.
Speaker 1: Very special and harsh. To make sure it doesn't become
Speaker 1: like a continued thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because because then and this is the thing
Speaker 4: about but both U Chicago and to Paul to less
Speaker 4: tuge extent too. But U Chicago and Northwestern are on
Speaker 4: basically like opposite extremes of the city right there. They're
Speaker 4: not in the middle of the city, of the downtown
Speaker 4: area that yeah, like the political league care about.
Speaker 1: It's on the north side, on the south side. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: School of the Artists, like this is literally the middle of Chicago,
Speaker 4: and so they can like it's very clear orders are
Speaker 4: coming down from above that this encampment can't be allowed
Speaker 4: to stay, and so they get the ship beaten out
Speaker 4: of them. And this is important for a few reasons.
Speaker 4: One it kind of like it kind of heightens the
Speaker 4: fear of police deppression. But the thing that it does
Speaker 4: that's important is that this goes fucking this like completely
Speaker 4: backfires on Brandon Johnson and you know, so sort of
Speaker 4: the mayor of the political administration, because this is you know,
Speaker 4: it turns out people are very very angry that a
Speaker 4: bunch of swat teams just beat up a bunch of
Speaker 4: art students with metal bars, right, And the consequence of
Speaker 4: this is that Brandon Johnson like refuses to or at
Speaker 4: least openly. What he's saying is that he won't use
Speaker 4: the Chicago Police Department at at at you know, on
Speaker 4: the University Chicago campus. University of Chicago has its own
Speaker 4: police force as about one hundred and fifty officers. It's
Speaker 4: sort of vaunted as like the largest police force in
Speaker 4: like the largest private one of the largest private police
Speaker 4: forces world. You know, they also shot a fucking kid
Speaker 4: while I was at school there, so you know, I
Speaker 4: have a like depatriot of them. But what kind of
Speaker 4: ends up happening is so there's there's that big the
Speaker 4: day I'm there, there's this big like confentration between protesters
Speaker 4: and kind of protesters, and you know, the kids form.
Speaker 1: A shield protesters and counter protesters.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, so so like the the FRAT show up,
Speaker 4: there's like a huge right wing media circus. But the
Speaker 4: kids have a shield wall, and the shield wall fucking
Speaker 4: holds and the counter protesters can't break it. They eventually
Speaker 4: back off and they're separated by the cops. And from
Speaker 4: there things get weird. The encampment gets cleared by a
Speaker 4: raid that probably could have been stopped, you know, it
Speaker 4: has they have one of these five am raids.
Speaker 3: You can't stop the police.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, so the thing I say about this, though,
Speaker 4: this is this isn't CPT, this is UCPD. They have
Speaker 4: like forty total, Like the number of people they can
Speaker 4: amass at one time is about forty. So like this,
Speaker 4: this was the only occupation that like maybe like plausibly
Speaker 4: could have actually beaten off the beaten off the police
Speaker 4: attack because you know, if they only have forty people
Speaker 4: and you have six hundred like that, that that that's
Speaker 4: about the point at which it's like plugged.
Speaker 3: It's unusual for cops to engage if they don't have
Speaker 3: the numerical advantage.
Speaker 1: That's odd.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, But what happens is that the basically the
Speaker 4: protesters through through through it, like there's a very very
Speaker 4: convoluated process of this. But the protesters decide not to
Speaker 4: defend the camp, so everyone it gets raided and they'll
Speaker 4: and like no one has up getting arrested, but they
Speaker 4: destroy the entire camp. And Okay, I guess there's one
Speaker 4: thing that I I probably should have fit this in
Speaker 4: better somewhere else. But something that's very interesting about both
Speaker 4: of these encampments, and this has been true of Moost
Speaker 4: of the encampments that I've I've seen is is who
Speaker 4: is like the racial and gender composition of who's there,
Speaker 4: because these are you know, and you could see this
Speaker 4: like when you're when when the counter protesters are facing
Speaker 4: off against the protesters, is the counter protesters they're like
Speaker 4: exclusively white, like most of them are white frat ros,
Speaker 4: white cis dudes usually yeah yeah. And then in the
Speaker 4: camps it is basically like it is like non it's
Speaker 4: non white people of all genders and like non sis
Speaker 4: dued people of all races. Yeah, very very very very prominently.
Speaker 4: And this this is something that I think is a
Speaker 4: sign of how the sort of like American political alignment
Speaker 4: has changed, and the kind the kinds of political alliances
Speaker 4: that are kind of so normal now that we don't
Speaker 4: even really think about them. But if you step back
Speaker 4: for a second and look at what's actually happening, this
Speaker 4: is this is the this is the actual political composition
Speaker 4: of these protests. It's queer people and non white people
Speaker 4: and obviously like people like me who are both. And
Speaker 4: I think that's an important thing because you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's a dynamic of these camps. It doesn't get talked
Speaker 4: about en off but is the core.
Speaker 1: Thing that's happening like politically, I agree that that was
Speaker 1: the same that was the same demographic balance at Emory.
Speaker 1: Let's take another break and we'll come back and hear
Speaker 1: from Mollie and then kind of have a bit more
Speaker 1: of an open discussion to close things out, comparing the
Speaker 1: similarities and differences from our experiences at these these four
Speaker 1: different protest encampments or different cities. I guess, all right,
Speaker 1: we are back. Mollie. You saw some pretty bad police
Speaker 1: violence at the camp in Charldsville, I believe right.
Speaker 3: Yes. The encampment at the University of Virginia was cleared
Speaker 3: on May fourth by Virginia State Police. It was not
Speaker 3: a pretty site. So the students at the University of
Speaker 3: Virginia set up an encampment on April thirtieth in the
Speaker 3: afternoon of the thirtieth. They had announced ahead of time
Speaker 3: that there will be programming during the day on May Day.
Speaker 3: So this sudden set up the day prior was I
Speaker 3: think a surprise to the university. When the students first
Speaker 3: put their stuff down, they put up some tents. The
Speaker 3: police chief of the University Police Force, Timothy Longo, showed
Speaker 3: up immediately and said no tense tends to the red line.
Speaker 3: Take the tents down. So that first night they took
Speaker 3: the tents down, and so for three nights they slept
Speaker 3: outside unsheltered because it was clear from the university that
Speaker 3: the tents are going to be the problem. That's the
Speaker 3: only issue that we have is the tents. You can
Speaker 3: be here. You just can't put up the tents, and
Speaker 3: you can't use amplified sound. You can't be too noisy.
Speaker 3: The place where they'd set up was this patch of grass.
Speaker 3: That's so if you're familiar with the University of Virginia,
Speaker 3: there's the lawn. It's called the lawn. It's not the
Speaker 3: only grass, but it's the special grass. It's the grass
Speaker 3: between the lawn rooms and the rotunda. It's like a
Speaker 3: long narrow They weren't on the lawn. I think that
Speaker 3: would have been a much bigger problem for the university,
Speaker 3: just because of the optics of it, and because students
Speaker 3: live in the lawn rooms. So they were actually on
Speaker 3: the other side of the rotunda, in this shady, grassy
Speaker 3: area between the rotunda and the chapel, within kind of
Speaker 3: spitting distance of that statue of Thomas Jefferson that the
Speaker 3: Nazis famously surrounded in twenty seventeen, so that same sort
Speaker 3: of area of the university. So for three nights they
Speaker 3: were out there unsheltered. It was pretty quiet. It was
Speaker 3: you know, a few dozen students. Most of the time
Speaker 3: classes had just ended, so they were preparing for finals,
Speaker 3: they were writing papers. I think some afternoons they had
Speaker 3: tas come out and help people with their with their papers,
Speaker 3: help them study. You know, it was chill. They were
Speaker 3: just kind of out there vibing. And then on the
Speaker 3: evening of the third they held a vigil for the
Speaker 3: dead in Palestine. There was great turnout for that. A
Speaker 3: lot of people came out, students, families, you know, there
Speaker 3: were babies there, dogs, like it was it was a
Speaker 3: safe place, right, It was a place where people felt
Speaker 3: safe letting their toddlers kick a ball around like. It
Speaker 3: was not a violent or embattled environment. There were baities
Speaker 3: there and they held the vigil, and after the vigil
Speaker 3: they had Shabbat dinner. But as the sun was going down,
Speaker 3: it was starting to rain, so they put up a
Speaker 3: pop up tent to cover the Shabbat dinner. You know,
Speaker 3: the food that had been set out and it was
Speaker 3: at that point that they began setting up the camping tents.
Speaker 3: And you know, they've been told all along by the
Speaker 3: police chief, you can't put tens up. You can't put
Speaker 3: tense up. It's against the rules. That's when we're going
Speaker 3: to have to intervene if you put the tense up.
Speaker 3: But every UVA school policy is available on the school's website.
Speaker 3: They have a policy database where you can, you know,
Speaker 3: search by keyword. You can, you know, you can see
Speaker 3: every official school policy. And the official school policy is
Speaker 3: that tens are allowed. It's on the website. You can
Speaker 3: have a tent. And so now this, you know, the
Speaker 3: university is saying that this discrepancy as well. You know
Speaker 3: that actually isn't a policy. It was a sort it's
Speaker 3: guidance on the policy. But it is in the policy
Speaker 3: database on the policy website where they keep the policies,
Speaker 3: and it says guideline on it, and a guideline it's
Speaker 3: a synonym for a policy. So the other I think
Speaker 3: the lesson to take away here. You know, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to Monday morning quarterback the student organizers. I was
Speaker 3: privy to internal discussions. I don't think that's my role.
Speaker 3: I think the takeaway here though, is that they're always
Speaker 3: going to move the goalposts. The only protest the administration
Speaker 3: will ever approve of is one that happened at least
Speaker 3: thirty years ago. Right, you have to be decades removed
Speaker 3: from progress to see it as positive. They never like
Speaker 3: progress while it's happening. They never like protest while it
Speaker 3: is happening. There's nothing you can do that will be allowed. Right,
Speaker 3: because the entire time, the first three days, when the
Speaker 3: police were keeping their distance, they were always there. There
Speaker 3: was always this sort of like needling back and forth
Speaker 3: while you know, can you just can you adjust this?
Speaker 3: Can you change this kind of behavior like you know
Speaker 3: you're not breaking the rules yet, but just you know,
Speaker 3: we're watching, be careful this constant needling. And so in
Speaker 3: the end on the fourth, when the Virginia State Police
Speaker 3: showed up, you know, up until that point, the idea
Speaker 3: was well, the provocation was the tense. The problem was
Speaker 3: the tents the police had to become because of the tents.
Speaker 3: You know that the policy on the school's website changed
Speaker 3: Saturday morning, like we have the you know, the cash
Speaker 3: on the website. You can see when the PDF was altered.
Speaker 3: It was that morning. So it's like, is it about
Speaker 3: the tents? Did you change this policy as pretext for
Speaker 3: the police raid? Because now in the aftermath, since they
Speaker 3: were caught out changing that policy immediately before the police
Speaker 3: raid of the camp, they're saying, well, no, actually, actually
Speaker 3: it wasn't about the tents. That's not really what this
Speaker 3: is about. It's because they're saying now that you know,
Speaker 3: four men in essentially a black block, right, So four
Speaker 3: men in black were carrying backpacks with helmets, were seen
Speaker 3: in the area, and they're known to law enforcement. And
Speaker 3: I'll be honest with you, I did not see these individuals.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, who care?
Speaker 1: Who care?
Speaker 3: It's public property, right, this is a public university, you know,
Speaker 3: this outside agitator narrative, and we had to beat and
Speaker 3: Pepper's Brady students because of these mysterious men. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, you know, the entire time that the
Speaker 3: students were in the encampment, they had faculty liaisons from
Speaker 3: Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and the faculty liaison were not,
Speaker 3: you know, negotiating, because students were clear that there was
Speaker 3: no negotiation, right that, you know, they're not negotiating on
Speaker 3: their demands. But that all communication between admin and the
Speaker 3: police into the encampment came through these faculty liaisons, and
Speaker 3: they were in constant open communication. And the faculty liaisms
Speaker 3: they are saying, well, if there was someone dangerous here,
Speaker 3: if the police had identified like a you know, an
Speaker 3: actual danger in this space, they never communicated that to us,
Speaker 3: right that before this raid happened. No one ever said
Speaker 3: to the faculty liaison, someone here is dangerous, there's a
Speaker 3: known criminal here, there's you know, this is why this
Speaker 3: has That was never communicated. So I'm not I'm not
Speaker 3: sure these you know, four mysterious individuals exist. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think that is a manufactured, you know, sort of
Speaker 3: after the fact pretext. But in any case, on Saturday morning,
Speaker 3: the anniversary of the Kent State massacre, state police showed
Speaker 3: up a lot of them all at once, and there was,
Speaker 3: you know, the local police set up perimeter around the encampment.
Speaker 3: And again, so it had been raining all night, it
Speaker 3: was soaking wet. Like I showed up Saturday morning to
Speaker 3: take some wet blankets home to wash them. Because things
Speaker 3: seemed fine, Things were very calm. Again, there had been
Speaker 3: babies there the day before it was very calm, and
Speaker 3: so I thought, well, I'll wash their wet blankets and
Speaker 3: socks and bring them back and then we can, you know,
Speaker 3: they can regroup and move forward. And while I was
Speaker 3: at home washing wet socks, I heard that the raid
Speaker 3: was starting. And again, so you know, because it had
Speaker 3: been raining, and it was a pretty small protest to
Speaker 3: begin with, people are doing their finals. There were maybe
Speaker 3: a few dozen people there, like a few dozen at most.
Speaker 3: But once the riot cops showed up, people start pouring
Speaker 3: out of the libraries. Hundreds and hundreds of students come
Speaker 3: to see what all the noise is about, right, they
Speaker 3: come to see what the disturbance is about. The university
Speaker 3: used the emergency alert system that texts students. It sends
Speaker 3: texts and emails for emergencies, you know, things like a
Speaker 3: fire or a tornado or a mass shooting. Right that
Speaker 3: a lot of these twoudents have recent memory of a
Speaker 3: very serious shooting here that they got these texts for.
Speaker 3: These text are for real emergencies. But they used the
Speaker 3: emergency alert system to tell students to avoid the area.
Speaker 3: So of course they poured into the area to see
Speaker 3: what was happening, and so they set up a perimeter
Speaker 3: around the camp so the people inside could not get
Speaker 3: out and the people who came to see what was
Speaker 3: happening could not get in, and a lie on riot
Speaker 3: cops marched into the camp and just bludgeoned and pepper
Speaker 3: sprayed at like point blank range. Pepper sprang them directly
Speaker 3: into their mouth, nose, and eyes. I think one student
Speaker 3: was wearing goggles and they removed her goggles so they
Speaker 3: could spray her directly in the eyes while she was
Speaker 3: already prone on the ground. One woman was having a seizure,
Speaker 3: but they didn't stop arresting her to let her seize
Speaker 3: in peace, and they were just sort of dragging her
Speaker 3: limp body away. It was very nasty, and once they
Speaker 3: made their leave twenty six arrests, they turned on the
Speaker 3: crowd that had gathered to watch, and they started pushing
Speaker 3: this massive crowd of students out into the street. They
Speaker 3: didn't close the street, like there was a dean on
Speaker 3: scene who was watching this happen and sort of making
Speaker 3: frantic phone calls to try and close the street that
Speaker 3: the students were being pushed into, because it was an
Speaker 3: open street with traffic and then the frat boys showed up, right, So,
Speaker 3: you know, students are coming out to see. Some of
Speaker 3: them are joining the protests, some of them are just curious,
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, now there's an entire hillside
Speaker 3: covered in frat boys. Some of them have Israeli flags,
Speaker 3: some of them have American flags. And there were times
Speaker 3: as that, you know, the police were you know, I'm
Speaker 3: very short, I'm about five feet tall, so there were
Speaker 3: times as the police were pushing towards us. I can't
Speaker 3: actually see that because the person in front of me
Speaker 3: is taller than me, and I would know the police
Speaker 3: were starting to advance again because the frat boys would cheer.
Speaker 3: They would start cheering, and you know, at one point,
Speaker 3: I'm standing next to this older professor. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't want to call anybody elderly, right, but this was
Speaker 3: this sort of a grandmotherly professor who'd been pepper sprayed
Speaker 3: and was you know, shouldered or shoulder with students, and
Speaker 3: she looked over at those frat boys and she said,
Speaker 3: I don't know how we're supposed to teach them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I expect a cop to be a cop.
Speaker 3: I've been pushed around by a cop before I'll survive.
Speaker 3: But I've never seen a cheering section for police violence before,
Speaker 3: and like.
Speaker 1: I have a few times, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: most disturbing feelings I've ever had, is when you have
Speaker 1: police attacking people and there's a group of like twenty
Speaker 1: to fifty to one hundred people on the other side
Speaker 1: of the police cheering them on. It's it's one of
Speaker 1: the most like like death worshiping moments in my life
Speaker 1: that I've like felt like, it's.
Speaker 3: Very ugly, very very ugly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminds me of how like in It's not
Speaker 2: the same, but like like in Napoleonic Area, for certain battles,
Speaker 2: it became a thing to go and spectate and people
Speaker 2: would sit on hills and watch the like formations move
Speaker 2: and literally have a picnic, right and have.
Speaker 1: This is real? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: They did it in Turkey and the Battle of Cabani too,
Speaker 2: like people they call it media Hill until the Turkish
Speaker 2: police take guests and BBC guys who were there, do.
Speaker 1: You know how do you know around numbers for arrests
Speaker 1: or anything like that.
Speaker 3: I believe there were twenty six arrests, the majority of
Speaker 3: them students one was a professor, one was a reporter,
Speaker 3: but a lot of students and grad students. And again, like,
Speaker 3: I think it's important to talk about this idea of
Speaker 3: the outside agitator, right because I don't want to get
Speaker 3: blocked down and like, oh, you know, a third of
Speaker 3: the arrests were not affiliated with the university. That doesn't
Speaker 3: mean anything, right, Like, Charlottesville is a college town. Charlottesville
Speaker 3: is UVA. UVA is Charlottesville is the largest employer in
Speaker 3: the region. It is sort of the you know, the
Speaker 3: iconic focal point of the region. It's a public school.
Speaker 3: People attend sporting events there, They attend concerts that like
Speaker 3: our largest local concert venue as a UVA property. You know,
Speaker 3: I did attend UVA, and I sometimes speak at classes
Speaker 3: at UBA, So like I have some sort of tangential
Speaker 3: affiliation with the university, but I don't have to justify
Speaker 3: my presence there, right. I mean, that's like saying you
Speaker 3: can't protest albit or boeing unless you purchase bomb systems
Speaker 3: or work there.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: What this enormous institution does with its billions of my
Speaker 3: tax dollars. Actually is my business. It is my business.
Speaker 3: And if you're going to beat teenagers in my backyard,
Speaker 3: that is my business, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like this is Yeah, the university is part
Speaker 2: of the community. They spend their entire like three hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty four days a year that that is their messaging.
Speaker 1: And yeah, let's as soon if the community shows up
Speaker 1: for the university they change that. Let's say you have
Speaker 1: like a brief discussion about I think one thing I'm
Speaker 1: definitely hearing from from you, Mollie is like like the
Speaker 1: presence of tents is seen as like a massive like
Speaker 1: sign of like escalation like this this is this is
Speaker 1: there for some reason, that's where they decided to draw
Speaker 1: the line. It's like when tents are going up and
Speaker 1: that's what needs to be cracked.
Speaker 3: Down on, which makes no sense because like I said,
Speaker 3: they'd been sleeping there for three days. Sure they're not
Speaker 3: wanting to be very symbolic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very symbolic. Like I think if especially if
Speaker 1: you look at like the images from the Columbia Quad,
Speaker 1: like it's it's a very symbolic thing of like tenses
Speaker 1: like we are we are like staking territory, like literally
Speaker 1: I think like that that is has been a massive thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting the universities that have and haven't
Speaker 1: had barricades set up like there was. There was no
Speaker 1: barricades at Emory. There was no really attempt to put
Speaker 1: barricades up. And you have like, you know, pretty pretty
Speaker 1: big barricades in Portland of course, and then like Humboldt
Speaker 1: being really the one that was like no, like you
Speaker 1: can like hold down a space for like a while
Speaker 1: if you'd have like lots of barricades, we'd see that.
Speaker 1: We see that uh in l A and know the
Speaker 1: difference between the bear kids going up and the barricades
Speaker 1: not and how that that does kind of slow that's
Speaker 1: just slow a police ory. That does slow some police response.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the one of the one
Speaker 1: of the dam dynamics we have there is like at
Speaker 1: least her Emory, right, we had the first day, people faced,
Speaker 1: you know, a pretty sizable amount of police violence. You know,
Speaker 1: there was like twenty eight arrests, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were assaulted by police, and for many people this was
Speaker 1: their first protest. A lot of these people were too
Speaker 1: young to participate in twenty twenty, which is kind of
Speaker 1: you know, odd looking back on it, but yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of these people were quite young, and this is
Speaker 1: their first experience of like police brutality in person.
Speaker 3: And like, what a first protest though, I mean, like
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think back to like, you know, usually
Speaker 3: your first protest doesn't end like this. Sorry, my dogs
Speaker 3: are going crazy right now. But you know, I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: It's just I think it's a a radicalizing and traumatizing
Speaker 3: first protest experience for a lot of young people. I
Speaker 3: was talking to a young student. Want to give too
Speaker 3: much information about her, but she was quite young, right,
Speaker 3: It was, you know, one of her first protest experiences.
Speaker 3: And she said when the cop approached her with something
Speaker 3: in his hand, she didn't know what it was, and
Speaker 3: she couldn't understand what he was doing or what he
Speaker 3: wanted from her. And it was until he raised the
Speaker 3: object above his head that she had this realization that
Speaker 3: he can hit me. Yeah, not only can he hit me,
Speaker 3: but he is going to hit me. That like, to
Speaker 3: have that realization in real time that you are not
Speaker 3: safe in your body, that the state will carry out
Speaker 3: violence against you. To not have known that before and
Speaker 3: to find it out as it is happening, I think
Speaker 3: is truly horrifying.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and so we have all these people who've
Speaker 1: experienced it now for the first time, and when they,
Speaker 1: you know, return to the campus the next day, they
Speaker 1: don't want to go through that traumatic event again, Like
Speaker 1: they don't want to. And so after we saw this
Speaker 1: in a few cities, but we saw this even in Columbia.
Speaker 1: But like after the first police response, how people behave
Speaker 1: afterwards on campus can be quite different because they really
Speaker 1: don't want that, and now admin is able to kind
Speaker 1: of use threat of police. It's a very effective to
Speaker 1: turn to be like, hey, if you keep things kind
Speaker 1: of chill, no tense, nothing crazy. But if you just
Speaker 1: hang out on the quad, that's it. Like that's fine,
Speaker 1: But if you do anything else, we're gonna call in
Speaker 1: those guys again and they're gonna fuck you up even worse.
Speaker 1: And like that is very effective and scaring people away
Speaker 1: from from doing anything. And I think a big thing
Speaker 1: to navigate here is like how how can you get
Speaker 1: students to feel like empowered once again, to like actually
Speaker 1: be able to do stuff. There was this there's this
Speaker 1: there's this one moment at emory where some like some
Speaker 1: other like like more like you know, more militanty. I
Speaker 1: don't know their exact affiliation with the university. I don't care.
Speaker 1: But some more it's some more like militant need more
Speaker 1: anarchistic people. Because it's Atlanta, we're like kind of like
Speaker 1: like shaming some of the students for not like doing
Speaker 1: more stuff. Like they got on the microphone and were
Speaker 1: like shaming them be like, hey, this this isn't a protest,
Speaker 1: You're just you're just hanging out, and like, I I
Speaker 1: get it, but also like what is that going to accomplish?
Speaker 1: I think I think shaming people for being scared of
Speaker 1: police is not effective. You need to you need to
Speaker 1: help them to feel empowered and that that's a very
Speaker 1: different thing to navigate.
Speaker 3: And you can't expect you can't expect their first protest
Speaker 3: action to be all out militant, nor should you want
Speaker 3: it to be, like and I sure. I think one
Speaker 3: of the things to remember is that what you know,
Speaker 3: what does success look like? That if you know, most
Speaker 3: of these university encampments aren't going to win divestment, right,
Speaker 3: they all have really similar demands and they include, you know,
Speaker 3: divestment of university funds, and most of them aren't going
Speaker 3: to get that but I think you can still envision success.
Speaker 3: As you know, these are young people. They are learning
Speaker 3: to organize together, they're learning to create that space together,
Speaker 3: they are coming together to talk about this issue, and
Speaker 3: I think that can be success. I don't think you
Speaker 3: have to bleed to have succeeded.
Speaker 1: No, totally, absolutely. I think just this being a learning
Speaker 1: experience for people. And now you have a lot of
Speaker 1: both professors and students whose view of police will forever
Speaker 1: be different, which you know, in the long run it's
Speaker 1: probably I would view that as like a quote unquote
Speaker 1: good thing, even though it is you know, it's short
Speaker 1: term trauma and possibly long term trauma. But like you
Speaker 1: have a much more accurate view of how the world
Speaker 1: works now, especially for a lot of these like IVY
Speaker 1: kids who've never never thought of police as a threat before.
Speaker 3: Police is always like a helper, right, And a lot
Speaker 3: of these are like you know, good kids exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1: And and and learning that like there doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be provocation to entice a police response. That is that
Speaker 1: is not a that's not a real dynamic.
Speaker 3: I mean especially at EVA, right, Like this wasn't one
Speaker 3: of those encampments where there it had been prior clashes
Speaker 3: or real escalation or any sort of hardening of barricades.
Speaker 1: No, they were.
Speaker 3: They were lying in their tents when the cops showed up.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The lesson is that nothing you can do is acceptable,
Speaker 3: so you might as well do what you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like keep your eyes. The other thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to mention was like victory looks like a number
Speaker 2: of different things in these protests, but like you should
Speaker 2: focus on whatever that is. And like something I saw
Speaker 2: among faculty colleagues sometimes, like it was just like should
Speaker 2: we get arrested? Like sure, should should we choose to
Speaker 2: get arrested? Like and like, no, you should not choose
Speaker 2: to get arrested, like you know, we always have if
Speaker 2: you can. Yeah, avoid it is not an end. It's
Speaker 2: not a.
Speaker 1: Good strategic goal to get arrested on purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this is in DC where you get,
Speaker 3: you know, a ticket and they let you go home.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, this will fuck up as I'm lucky if your
Speaker 2: tenured faculty will fuck up your life a lot less
Speaker 2: than people in other social and economic circumstances, right.
Speaker 3: But even in the most privileged possible circumstance, Like it
Speaker 3: fucking sucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might be denied access to your medication, You
Speaker 2: might be confined in a cell with people who do
Speaker 2: not identify with the same gender as you. Right, the
Speaker 2: cops are going to be fucking mean to you. That's
Speaker 2: what they do, Like they do violence to retect capital.
Speaker 3: That's why we have a lot of people are getting
Speaker 3: permanent nerve damage from being left in flexi cups. Like
Speaker 3: even if even if your charges get dropped, like you
Speaker 3: could suffer forever from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's you have no you know, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter how good your dad lawyer is or whatever.
Speaker 1: They're the cops. They're going to get away with it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like when I think about the young people
Speaker 2: I was talking to people, and like when I think
Speaker 2: about twenty twenty, where I've talking.
Speaker 1: To young people, I'm older and thirty seven.
Speaker 2: Like I think about my own, like, you know, growing
Speaker 2: up as a little kid, Like there was the like
Speaker 2: the anti Sweatshow movement, which morphed into the G eight movement,
Speaker 2: which morphed into like Xapatista Solidarity, which morphed into the
Speaker 2: Free Palestine movement and movement against the British National Party.
Speaker 2: And we got to like step up until we were
Speaker 2: fighting Nazis, Right, folks, young people who are protesting now
Speaker 2: who didn't participate in twenty twenty didn't get like this
Speaker 2: was just like a baptism of fire. Like the people
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty got to go out in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump, right in twenty seventeen and wear the
Speaker 2: little pink hats and walk around in the pink hats,
Speaker 2: you know, and they got introduced to the cops and
Speaker 2: the fact that they are just going to fuck you
Speaker 2: up because they want too slowly. But these people didn't.
Speaker 2: And I don't think we should blame them for being
Speaker 2: like none of us are, to be clear, but like folks,
Speaker 2: I've seen it too much on the internet, like don't
Speaker 2: do that shit, like teach people to be stronger than
Speaker 2: the state. Don't shame them for not already being there.
Speaker 4: That's something that happened, Like I literally watched this like
Speaker 4: happen at the Chicago cant was people like getting ready
Speaker 4: to have to fight off like these frapros and you know,
Speaker 4: like that experience and you know, and this is something
Speaker 4: I think is interesting about these protests. Two was like
Speaker 4: from UCLA, Like UCLA was like a pretty explicit attempt
Speaker 4: to try to use these like right wing like paramilitary
Speaker 4: people to knock out an encampment, and they couldn't do it. Like,
Speaker 4: they hurt a lot of people, right, like two hundred
Speaker 4: people I think went to the hospital or like Leaster
Speaker 4: treated by medics after it.
Speaker 1: Right, they hurt a lot of people.
Speaker 4: It was really scary. But they couldn't break they couldn't
Speaker 4: break the barricades. And that happened at Chicago too. It
Speaker 4: was like they couldn't like it in the Chicago like
Speaker 4: those those like they're they're on. But at nine o'clock
Speaker 4: in the morning on the day of that encampment, there
Speaker 4: were no fucking barricades. It was just a bunch of
Speaker 4: tents in a lawn, right, and in like three hours
Speaker 4: they set up a thing that you know still I
Speaker 4: mean they weren't still weren't really barricades. But like you
Speaker 4: got to watch these kids and you know, the people
Speaker 4: who were there, like you know, like realize that a
Speaker 4: group of them can stand and fight and hold these people,
Speaker 4: and they and they did it. They fucking stood there,
Speaker 4: they stood their ground, they held them, they fought and
Speaker 4: at the end of the day, the fucking fraproos ran
Speaker 4: away and it wasn't really intel. And then this is
Speaker 4: I think it's been a really interesting element of this
Speaker 4: is that like these these per military groups have been
Speaker 4: just staggeringly unable to actually like beat a bunch of
Speaker 4: protesters like in you know, in in in the sort
Speaker 4: of military sense of like who holds the field at
Speaker 4: the end of the fight. They can't do it, and
Speaker 4: only the cops have been able to.
Speaker 1: And the other thing about that is, like you had
Speaker 1: you have a more legitimate way to fight off these
Speaker 1: like non state actionsah yeah, right, whenever you there is
Speaker 1: because of the nature of the state's monopoly of legitimate
Speaker 1: of violence, fighting off the police can be a lot
Speaker 1: more tricky than fighting off these like frat boy groups
Speaker 1: like that. That is, that is a very different dynamic.
Speaker 4: And then that was the process that like unfolded there.
Speaker 4: It was like a lot of people who were like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we don't want to escalate, and it was like, well, okay,
Speaker 4: so like several hundred people are going to show up.
Speaker 4: We also happened to us the UCLA like it has
Speaker 4: to right, like you know, I mean like like you
Speaker 4: can't just keep doing your sort of like we're not
Speaker 4: gonna engage your counter protesters thing where there's two hundred
Speaker 4: of these people who are going to try to beat
Speaker 4: the shit.
Speaker 1: Out of you.
Speaker 3: Right, there's I mean, there's choosing not to engage with
Speaker 3: someone who just wants attention, and then there is self defense.
Speaker 3: I think those are.
Speaker 4: Two different things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely need.
Speaker 3: Some like you don't you know, you don't give someone
Speaker 3: their viral video that they can put on YouTube or whatever,
Speaker 3: but if someone's going to beat you with a stick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's like I'm not saying either of them
Speaker 4: are like right or wrong. It's just like, yeah, like
Speaker 4: you can't. You can't use the same tactics. And being
Speaker 4: forced to defend yourself like had this real sort of
Speaker 4: like impact on people and like I don't know, it's
Speaker 4: like I gotta see people just like understanding what you
Speaker 4: can do with the physical mass of a group of people.
Speaker 4: And I don't know, it was it was like it
Speaker 4: was it was a really emotional experience for like a
Speaker 4: lot of the people there, and it was really cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think we it would be wrong just
Speaker 1: to like criticize these these students specifically for dropping the
Speaker 1: ball in various ways. I think the thing that we
Speaker 1: can completely criticize and point to as a as a
Speaker 1: massive failure. Is everyone who has not been participating, how
Speaker 1: they have been viewing what's going on, and this is,
Speaker 1: this is, this is this will be the last thing
Speaker 1: I talk about, especially even even I just on like
Speaker 1: the media side and in this general discussion, like there's
Speaker 1: been such a such a singular focus on the campus
Speaker 1: encampment like itself, instead of like why the protests are
Speaker 1: happening in the first place, what's going on in Gaza
Speaker 1: and just instead just focusing on like, yeah, the actual
Speaker 1: the actual thing on campus, but but but not caring
Speaker 1: about why these protests are even happening, willfully ignoring why
Speaker 1: it's happening, framing all literally all of the campus protests
Speaker 1: as inherently anti semitic, as if that is the main driver,
Speaker 1: and ignoring ignoring the many instances for people who have
Speaker 1: expressed anti semitic things have been have been like removed
Speaker 1: and pushed out of campus, which has happened in many places.
Speaker 1: But it's it's just it's just so lazy to totally
Speaker 1: like reject the reasoning for why these protests are happening.
Speaker 1: The framing of trespassing as a form of violence, call
Speaker 1: calling these encampments violent as if as if being on
Speaker 1: campus is violent, and meanwhile never once mentioning the actual
Speaker 1: violence on display, which is almost solely at the hands
Speaker 1: of police and these other far right groups. Friend of
Speaker 1: the Pod Cody Johnston had a had a very very
Speaker 1: good tweet quote, these people who I despise and never
Speaker 1: agree with, should protest the way I prefer unquote right.
Speaker 3: Don't don't debate tactics with people who don't share your goals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and again like these people who who who
Speaker 1: have like an ideological opposition to every single thing that
Speaker 1: these protests are staying for.
Speaker 3: People do this in the actual Bush administration.
Speaker 2: Just a wild fucking mental gymnastics to be like, it
Speaker 2: is illegal for you to have your tents here that
Speaker 2: is trespassed, Therefore we can violently displace you. Also, I
Speaker 2: stand with Israel, like exactly it's happening.
Speaker 3: Hed remind people of too is you know, you know,
Speaker 3: the saying like, well, technically they broke the rules. Okay, Well,
Speaker 3: technically if you're going twenty over the speed limit, the
Speaker 3: cop can book you into jail. Would it be a
Speaker 3: bizarre escalation of force for him to do that. Do
Speaker 3: they normally do it? Now? They don't, Right So, just
Speaker 3: because just because the police can intervene in certain ways
Speaker 3: doesn't mean it makes sense for them to do so.
Speaker 1: Technically, you're not supposed to bomb forty thousand civilians, right
Speaker 1: So I think that's really weapons.
Speaker 4: Are illegal under under the Lahy Act, And it doesn't
Speaker 4: matter for shit.
Speaker 3: Because the rules, you know, the police are only only
Speaker 3: powerful to punish you.
Speaker 1: The fact that there's more moral outrage across the country
Speaker 1: or students protesting a genocide than there is for forty
Speaker 1: thousand civilians being murdered, is just looking at a deep
Speaker 1: hole at the conscience of this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also, the thing I will say about that is if
Speaker 4: you look at the polling numbers on this, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's like like forty seven ish percent support for like
Speaker 4: banning like protesters on campus. However, when you actually look
Speaker 4: at the numbers, like especially if you look at numbers
Speaker 4: of my cultures, we look at the numbers of people
Speaker 4: in general who now like who now support like ceasing
Speaker 4: like ceasing sending arms to Israel, it's been interesting, so.
Speaker 1: Like they have been work totally. It's just that the
Speaker 1: people who control this country is a different demographic than
Speaker 1: all the young people who are potesting on campus, right,
Speaker 1: which is what we're looking at. And I think it's
Speaker 1: also important to remind you that almost every single campus
Speaker 1: protest historically has been completely vindicated over time because they're
Speaker 1: obviously correct, and if you deny that, who are you fooling? Anyway?
Speaker 1: I think that this episode's already pretty long, but I
Speaker 1: was happy to hear a collection of of our four
Speaker 1: different accounts from four different places.
Speaker 3: Oh, I do just want to say really quick before
Speaker 3: we wrap this up. To everyone who says these students
Speaker 3: are too young to know what they are protesting, they
Speaker 3: couldn't possibly understand what they are talking about. Fred Hampton
Speaker 3: was twenty one.
Speaker 1: People forget how how young MLK was when he started doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're young enough for fucking Israel to kill them, right, absolutely,
Speaker 2: there are no universities in Guys or anymore. Like, it's
Speaker 2: just it's ridiculous. They're also young enough to join the
Speaker 2: idea for any other military and go and kill people.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Argument, Like, you don't have to go there and talk
Speaker 3: to these students. They know exactly what they're protesting. They
Speaker 3: know exactly what they're talking about. A lot of them
Speaker 3: are actually fairly well versed on the minutia of what
Speaker 3: divestment means and what that looks like, and what the
Speaker 3: fiduciary duties are. Like, they're not stupid. They know what
Speaker 3: they're talking about.
Speaker 1: All these dumb college educated youngsters, all.
Speaker 3: These eighty it's at Columbia.
Speaker 1: Anyways, fucking nerds, you Chicago.
Speaker 2: It's like, we don't talk about Palestine enough in classy.
Speaker 2: Like I teach a lot of world history classes. It's
Speaker 2: certainly not on the little boxes you have to take.
Speaker 2: And some people came to the encampments to learn, and
Speaker 2: that's fucking great too. And some people taught people and
Speaker 2: that's great too. Like it's a place where a lot
Speaker 2: of learning happened and people became more informed over time.
Speaker 2: You don't need to have a PhD or masters in
Speaker 2: an area to understand that bombing children is bad and
Speaker 2: wanted to stop. We had a world war about this,
Speaker 2: like genocides are bad. So this will be a topic
Speaker 2: we continue to cover on the show over the course.
Speaker 2: At the summer, we'll have I'm planning a deep dive
Speaker 2: about what happened at Emory Margaret has an upcoming episode
Speaker 2: about how people who were engaged in the campus protests
Speaker 2: can stay involved over the summer, and of course we
Speaker 2: will continue to talk about what's been happening in Gaza.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, solid Air to everyone who's out there.
Speaker 3: Flush your eyes with water.
Speaker 1: Flush your eyes with water again.
Speaker 5: Learned It Could Happen here as a production of cool
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Speaker 5: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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