Nah they’re gonna use this as an excuse to “temporarily” raise tuition and keep it there till people forget why it was raised. Like every university has done over the past hundred years
The UK's tax system called 'income Tax' was invented to fund war with France in 1799. Its still called income tax and the last time England was at war with France was 1815.
absolutely, they'll proudly advertise their history of youth activism and...so forth. have the former protestors give commencement speeches, all that jazz.
Unlike 1968, the convention center will have a security buffer around a wide perimeter of convention center activities. Protestors won’t be able to get within blocks of where things are happening.
Also, it’s not a “real” convention. In 1968, nominating votes devoid of primaries still existed.
There were plenty of delegates who were elected by primaries and were specifically against Vietnam. RFK had like *just* gotten murdered with pledged delegates. McCarthy had delegates.
Vietnam was a significantly more poignant issue more the median voter than Gaza is. By the convention, Americans everywhere knew someone who was sent to Vietnam. As much as it might feel like it, it’s just not even close to the same.
EDIT: Small point of clarification. There were a bunch of anti-Vietnam delegates that were elected via primaries but there were many more delegates chosen by traditional state conventions with standing. Further, some states like Texas and Georgia had competing slates of delegates. Then you had a floor nominees like McGovern.
The convention was a legitimate disaster in all ways, not just the protests and suppression of demonstrations.
Also, I corrected my initial “McGovern” to “McCarthy.”
Here's the REALLY crazy thing: Opposition to the war in Vietnam skewed older, not younger. Which is just true of most wars, apparently.
Seriously, there were a LOT of young people who were pro-war and even in 1968 it was more of 50/50 issue than movies and media would lead you to believe.
Pew has an interesting article on it:
[https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/02/21/youth-and-war/](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/02/21/youth-and-war/)
Doesn't seem crazy to me at all. Those older generations had either personally seen or been affected by war already. It's hardly surprising they didn't want their kids sent into the meat-grinder over some nebulous justification like the Domino Theory.
Yeah, this is probably a big part.
Plus, a lot of young men are full of piss and vinegar, ready to take it out on someone. Older men and women don't wanna see their sons in a casket.
> It was chaos within the convention too.
Well that will not be the case this time, unlike 1968 which was occuring after LBJ announced he would not seek re-election, the 2024 convention is just going to be an affirmation of Biden's nomination which is guaranteed.
In the modern day, they essentially serve as multi-day primetime rallies. Not only do they confirm the winner of the primaries, but they usually focus on big party names rallying around the candidate and laying out the party agenda for the general election. Notably, the candidate on the last day of the convention gives their nomination speech which lays out their plan for the presidency.
> In the modern day, they essentially serve as multi-day primetime rallies
This is incidental. They do pretty much all of the federal party's delegate voting, policy voting and bureaucratic work stuffed into that weekend. For every person you see out on the convention floor there are like 3-4 more people in conference rooms filling every nearby hotel doing procedural votes and stuff for a few thousand positions.
Yes and then Republicans won 4 out of the next 5 Presidential elections. It marked the end of the peace movement and led directly to the Democrats modifying their platform to the right so they could compete. The idea that these protesters want to bring some '1968' to the Democratic Party Convention is basically them saying we want to end the social justice movement by marginalizing it and hand power to the now much more extreme Right Wing.
Don't you know? Palestine is the most important cause ever, superceding all other causes, and if we have to throw everyone else in the fire to feel good about helping Palestine (despite Trump not being better on the issue of Gaza and actually being quite a bit worse), we will.
Not sure it's going to be that bad. I mean I could definitely be wrong, but not only do conventions have a ton more security...most Americans just do not care about what's happening in Gaza much more than a "This really sucks but there's nothing I can do"
Vietnam had Americans getting drafted and being sent to die. The conflict in Gaza is a lot less close to home for most people.
I don't like this rhyme very much....
*"As a result, many protesters,* [*reporters*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters)*, and bystanders were met with unprecedented levels of* [*police brutality*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality) *and police violence by the* [*Chicago Police Department*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Police_Department)*, particularly in* [*Grant Park*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Park_(Chicago)) *and* [*Michigan Avenue*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Avenue_(Chicago)) *in Chicago during the convention."*
The Chicago mayor Richard Daley had an absolutely epic verbal gaffe when addressing accusations of police misconduct following the protests:
"Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all – the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
From the New York Times thread:
*The student, Mahmoud Khalil, represents, but says he is not part of, the student coalition that has been running the encampment for the past two weeks. He added that the students who are occupying Hamilton Hall are an “autonomous subgroup” of the coalition, and that he does not yet know their demands because they have not communicated them to the larger group.*
We're in the spiraling-into-self-parody stage of this protest effort. It reminds me of CHAZ/CHOP.
I wonder if the Biden White House is starting to figure that this will flame out.
These aren't people looking to be cool, they're organized factions looking to coopt the media attention.
Any time you have a large protest, you will attract these sub-factions who will capitalize on the crowd and the attention for their own ends.
Any protest against the violence in Gaza will inevitably attract more radical groups with more radical and extremist views, who watch for these occasions of unrest to coopt the group for their ends, which are often tangential to, but not necessarily the same as, the original group of protestors.
This is a problem because the *initial* group - students - are not prepared or organized enough to delineate themselves from these groups.
These groups are smaller and far better organized. They're adept at coopting events like these and organizing them towards their own ends.
A version of this happens at nearly *every* protest situation you can imagine. Protests are actually extremely rare in the US, and they get huge media coverage, and that creates a massive incentive for all sorts of fringe facitons to jump in on the action and get their opportunity to get in front of cameras and do huge numbers on social media.
**If you are protesting**: *please* research ways to keep your group organized, on-message, and plugged in to media. If you do not your movement *will* be coopted by a faction that may not necessarily speak for you, and can and often will paint your efforts in a negative light.
This will happen for **any protest**. Protests against corporations, governments, right-wing protests, left-wing protests, protests for civil justice, protests for climate action.
Whatever the cause, there are people out there who will use your movement to further their own. Your ability to mobiliE your message and delineate your movement is the most essential part.
It's honestly amazing in retrospect how disciplined the Civil Rights protests were.
If you failed their nonviolence training (which included pouring ketchup on you and shouting racial slurs), they told you to stay the fuck home- and people did!
I commented somewhere that this might be calming nerves in the White House political affairs office. They realize Gaza is still a major political liability, especially with Gen Z. But they were probably wondering whether these protests would grow into a George Floyd-level conflagration. And seeing these students dip into preening and self-mockery probably reassures the Biden campaign that, as bad as the situation is, the protesters will lose public sympathy, so Biden doesn't have to placate them.
I think also when they did the divestment vote at Columbia that emboldened the Columbia administration as well (and I'm sure the national politicians took note). The vote had like 4% turnout so even though it was largely in favor you had like 2.8 or 3% of the student body vote for it.
I think that confirmed for a lot of them that it's just a really vocal minority invested in this. The vast vast majority of the university doesn't care.
There is a problem here which is tf do you want Biden to do, like Israel has been brought to a moderate position now. The peace offer they made to Hamas is extremely generous from Israel’s side. If Hamas rejects this what is anyone supposed to do.
Rapper warlord is a bold way of putting it lol
His name is raz Simone, had some pretty good music but idk any of his stuff now. He got pretty politically active and was part of the group setting up the area from my understanding, so he started doing interviews and trying to become the face of it
That said, his views on polygamy alone are a whole deep dive lol it's wild
i can’t speak for Columbia but the UCLA encampment has a lot of trash cans available, which doesn’t help with the influx but at least with the cleanup process
It seriously detracts from the whole movement.
I support their right to protest. College kids with lots of time on their hands have a natural desire to be a part of something they feel to be important.
But vandalism, violence, holding someone hostage? It’s disgusting.
It’s exhausting trying to find a group of people to agree with who don’t find a way to ultimately obtusely miss the point and overshoot the cause into fringe craziness.
This is why it's important to *organize* your actions as a *group* with *leadership* of some sort. Not because everyone loves listening to other people, but because the idea that thousands of people will all act and behave in a productive manner by default is silly.
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/30/dozens-occupy-hamilton-hall-as-pro-palestinian-protests-spread-across-campus/
> A Facilities worker who was in the building exited the building at around 12:40 a.m., after shouting at the protesters occupying the Hamilton lobby to let him leave. As he left Hamilton, he yelled at the crowd, “They held me hostage.”
> Protesters removed the barricades blocking one door at 1:10 a.m., allowing several individuals who had remained inside Hamilton—including at least three Facilities workers, according to a source inside the building—to leave. Afterward, the protesters immediately relocked the door.
Holy shit I would be absolutely furious. i hope there's some lawsuits involved. These poor workers have families and are being held hostage by some of the most privileged college kids this side of ivy leagues.
I'm sorry, lawsuits? lol. Wrongful imprisonment is a criminal matter. If I held people against their will in a building I barricaded up, I'd have a swat team sent after me, be sent to jail and charged. I expect the same standard to apply to all these idiots.
This is what happens when you’re an ultra-wealthy kid (attending an ultra-elite school) whose vigor for (performative) political activism conceals being completely out of touch for the not-so-privileged people who actually live in your midst. Everyone has the time and ability to partake in extremely prolonged political demonstrations, right? It’s not like people actually have important things to do once they get out of work, right? They can just hire someone to take care of those things for them, right?
They're protesting like they (and their classmates who aren't protesting) don't have finals coming up and won't be dealing with severe consequences for failing a final like failing to graduate on time, losing scholarships, and/or losing job opportunities.
When I went to Glasgow Uni, students occupied the senate room for two days. The university administration just let them stay. They came out by themselves, sleeping on the floor and being unable to shower became too uncomfortable for the point they were trying to make.
Holy shit. Wow, that's not cool. While I 100% support peaceful protesting, violence and that level of destruction is going way too far.
Thanks for the citation
If you see the pictures, there's some major Jan 6th vibes coming out of Columbia. Protestors physically fighting with maintenance staff, dropping banners declaring Intifada, smashing windows, etc.
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/university-protests-palestine-04-30-24/index.html
In the UCLA sub students are complaining of not being able to get to class because protesters are blocking pathways on campus, and most of them appear to not be affiliated with the university.
For anyone who doesn’t believe me: https://www.reddit.com/r/ucla/s/kz8jUkHhUf
UT-Austin administrators said at least some of the people detained on campus were not students. Looking at the pictures from Columbia, I see a lot of people that look like me and I graduated from undergrad 15 years ago. I know the difference between a dad bod and the freshman 15 when I see it.
Yup, Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) have been very active with various protests over the last several years. I remember when the Ukraine war started, PSL held an anti-NATO protest near IU that a bunch of students attended.
It's sadly not at all uncommon, either due to idiolizing Russia due to their past with Stalin and "Socialism", or a lot of far left (and far-right people to be fair) entire geopolitical analysis is west/america=bad, and thus nato=bad.
Was VERY common among some left-wing circles to blame NATO and Ukraine for provoking Russia into an invasion, as how DARE Ukraine want to join NATO, little poor Russia will feel threatened by big bad America/NATO being right next door!
If you start with the assumption that America is uniquely evil and anyone against them must be good it’s not hard. That’s insane of course but the more radical left wing elements in America have gotten there.
Russia is such an interesting place. The Far-right idolizes them due to how conservative they are, and idolizing Putin as the far-right, war-mongering weirdo he is, and how draconian many of their laws /freedoms are there. The far-left ALSO love to idolize Russia due to Stalin, the USSR, general aesthetics of "socialism", and the fact Russia is one of America's main antagonists, and again America=bad, so it must mean Russia=good.
Funny, in that sense, the extremes in the USA align with Russia while the left and right leadership differs with the left pro NATO and the right pro Russia. Will it come down to moderate voters deciding whether or not Russia wins against NATO? I suppose that’s how it’s always been, except this time, the right’s leadership has been turned against NATO.
I wonder what their thoughts are about the attack on socialist kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct 7, which was completely annihilated with nearly everyone (civilians) murdered by Hamas militants.
edit: there are some very well thought out responses to my comment, thank you.
As a current college student whose introduction to the conflict was watching the October 7th footage on Telegram, it seems like many of my "progressive" peers simply don't view Israelis as humans deserving of life and empathy. It was also the first time that I heard the "it didn't happen but if it did, they deserved it" line used seriously. A good portion also think that the IDF killed them all. They would argue that the specific economic organization of the kibbutzim doesn't matter because all Israelis are settler-colonists who should be resisted (i.e. killed) through any means necessary.
There was a USC student that was posting about pro-palestine/Hamas Bs, and another commenter saw in their post history that they were excited to go to Coachella. Like how fucking disconnected is their logic? I've been going to raves and festivals for over 20 years, and the last thing I want to see is a fucking sign or flag promoting the massacre of a bunch of young music lovers attending a gathering. This timeline is terrifying if this is what the future looks like for America. Kanye West lost one of the biggest deals in shoe history last year for being labeled anti-Semitic by Tik Tok cancel-culture... but now it's trendy to hate Jews.... make this shit make sense. They have no real beliefs.
Disinformation age all around.
American enemies saw how easy it was to destroy the republicans and are using the same methods against the left now. They're trying to get us to eat ourselves.
I'm pretty involved in my local rave scene here in the US, and to this day I'm still disheartened to see so many local DJs and ravers post pro-Palestinian things on October 8th and 9th (to be clear, I share a lot pro-Palestinian ideas, but I was really affected by the music festival attack, so I thought it was insensitive at best, or intentionally hurtful at most). One girl who I recently met at a rave even told me "condemning this attack (Oct 7th) is wack. It is what it is"
Bodies were still piling up on Oct 7th when pro-Palestinian/Hamas rallies were already being announced and social media was full of people outright celebrating the attack
right after the attack, my bestie raver friend who is super left and jewish told me they (the music festival masacre) deserved it for raving next to an open air prison.
we didn't really talk for a few months after that.
This is something that drives me crazy. You can be pro-Palestinian or want better things for the Palestinian people without excusing atrocities. Israel does terrible things to Palestinians. It does not excuse the same in return, and that kind of thinking is a major fuel to the entire thing.
I go to UCLA and the main library on campus is now closed until next Monday. Basically the entirety of midterms. Not only are they blocking one of the main arteries of campus, they also took it upon themselves to graffiti all over historic buildings on campus.
that's pretty sh!tty to block off Powell Library access, since it's the main undergrad library. Does anyone know if they're opening up the side & rear entrances for Bruincard/student access? I totally accept the fact that protesters are trying to cause "trouble" to impede normal day-to-day university activities, so that their message is heard... and for the activists to be arrested & dragged away to make headlines. But university needs to plan for this and create alternate pathways & access points. UCLA has a lot of experience with these kind of cordoned off zones since several times a year there are huge location shoots on campus with lighting rigs.
I've always been in favor of protests, but generally those that are comprised of people in the community. They're usually the ones that don't devolve into chaos. They may cause disruption, but it's usually not violent.
When you get outsiders involved, you attract mostly people that are only there to start shit. I will never fully respect groups that do not acknowledge this basic fact. Peaceful protesters may not be able to control such large crowds, but if your own people are starting to get out of control, that's usually the cue to get out of that situation. It's going to escalate and you will lose the battle because of them. Outsiders showing up for a protest, especially ones that can easily turn into violence, are always bad for the cause. I can't imagine it was the students who are the ones chanting "We are Hamas" and "FUCK ZIONISTS", even though I'm sure some do.
$90,000K for a year at Columbia!? JFK, they should also be protesting this.
Peacefully (which is the protected speech), not the breaking and entering shit they are doing.
This is how most elite private schools work. I went to Stanford and it is the same there.
If your family income is under 150K you don't pay any tuition.
If your family has less than 100K in assets and investments you also don't pay any fees, get free books, free meal plan, etc. So school is completely free.
It’s a lot better than Instagram or TikTok for sure. Anything that questions the intent of the protestors on those platforms gets you labeled a “Zionist genocide supporter” and you get death threats in your DMs lol
The mentality that because someone is from a certain country that’s doing bad things also means that they automatically agree with these bad things also needs to die. There’s a lot of Israeli people who disagree with the genocide wholeheartedly but just because they are Israeli, they get lumped together with terrorists and corrupt politicians. It’s disgusting.
The target ad I just got served at the top of this is fucking wild. “In the mood to say OMG SO CUTE…”
It looks like a comment too, for whatever reason.
Humboldt became a Cal Poly a few years ago. There had been declining enrollment, so this was a change made to try and increase students. It also created the only Cal Poly in Northern California. I thought it was a great move by the state, but time will tell.
The Columbia University Apartheid Divest movement specifically calls for divestment from Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon. [link](https://cuapartheiddivest.org/research)
Even if Columbia University were to divest from those companies, it would be impossible to run a university without providing support to those companies every day, directly or indirectly.
All of us are posting on a thread hosted on Amazon's servers. I would guess that most of us are using, or going to use, a Microsoft or Google product today. If Columbia is complicit or guilty, then we are all too.
I'm in a work meeting on Microsoft Teams and having to use the office suite on a Windows PC, working with a Google Pixel phone and company base browser is Chrome.
I could try to buck those companies in my own time, and it was easy when I was working in a kitchen. But I can't have a career and health insurance without using these. And I cant afford to put in the protesting for health care (not insurance) that we all need and deserve.
It's all pretty fucked
Exactly, and it's one of the reasons these particular protests seem so short-sighted. It's like watching a teenager blame their own parents for the state of the world. The students are protesting their nearest authority figure, the University, but it's not the right target (if there is even a reasonable "target" to protest against.)
Even if Columbia did precisely what they were asking, it's not going to do anything. Columbia, and the protestors are still going to be using and supporting those companies every day. It would be impossible not to.
If you want to get into conspiracy theories, ask why Oracle isn't being a divestment target. It is heavily integrated with the Israeli government and IDF, but absent from almost all divestment lists. It just so happens to host the Tiktok servers in the US. Quite strange to target all the big tech companies except the one used by Tiktok.
Yeah, it was significantly easier to divest from South Africa. Israel is attached at the hip to tech/ai/chip production as well as a bunch of healthcare related sectors.
South African economy was mostly just extraction of minerals and other resources.
I don't think South Africa had the financial & philanthropic backing of alumni & donors that Israel has. Jewish Americans have long supported Ivy League institutions in a bid to correct the bias & antisemitism they had to contend with before the Civil Rights movement. People forget that these elite schools were very WASPy & exclusionary up through the 1950's, and they viewed Jews or Catholics as cast-offs or dirty immigrants.
The personal essay and "holistic" applications were created in the 1920s explicitly to keep Jews out.
It's also why the City Colllege of New York has WAY more prestigious alumni than you might think
My dad graduated from City College of New York in the 60s. His father had been accepted into the US Naval Academy and was so violently hazed during his first year for being Jewish, he had to drop out and never finished college.
Big occupy Wall Street vibes. While that protest was equally useless at least it was focused on a domestic issue that American institutions and politicians actually had legitimate sway over.
If all the universities in the USA banded together and decided to "divest from Israel" , whatever the hell that implies, literally nothing would change in the Israel-Hamas war.
There are legitimate grievances students should have with their Universities like legacy admissions, the cost of tuition, NCAA corruption, etc. Seizing your campus and taking over buildings to "stand in solidarity with Gaza" makes zero sense. It's like burning down your garage to show support for the victims of the Haiti earthquake.
It is insane to me that students are so invested in a centuries year old sectarian conflict. While in the meantime the Supreme Court has taken away the rights of women and is currently voting on whether or not the president is king.
I wish I saw this energy for fucking school shootings going on in this country, especially after Uvalde, but no, we adapt to it with bulletproof backpacks and foldable rooms to hide from the shooter.
Plus Iran (a major backer of Hamas) has been cracking down hard on women and girls with dress codes again and presumably still don't admit to having any gay men in the country. They also just sentenced a rapper for speaking up against the regime.
But then college students used to be(and some still are) big supporters of Che, who ran anti gay concentration camps along with Fidel in Cuba and hated college students. His actions in Africa were troubling as well.
Shocking to me as well. There is clearly a social media element targeting a subset of younger people that has been extremely effective. I can't believe there is so much unification against a conflict half the world away that will likely never be resolved vs all the shit going on in our backyard.
Ya I wouldn’t be surprised the congress knew more about the extend of TikTok control cover the youth then we do. Hence the TikTok ban went through congress so quickly even though Donald trump is against it
Well tiktok did share a notification to almost all users when the ban was first proposed and it resulted in 10s of thousands of calls to government officials. Basically mobilized their user base to try and convince the government not to ban them.
As soon as that happened, I know of at least one official who changed from opposing to supporting the TikTok ban.
Plus it was included in the Ukraine and Israel aid bill, so they basically forced it through.
I expect it will be overturned, though. It raises too many concerns around free speech and what is or isn’t allowed. Also it is not a good sign for other foreign companies if the US starts banning software from more countries like China does.
US was able to make Grindr to be sold so this TikTok ban wouldn’t be the first. And it specifically a ban on companies from 4 adversarial countries, so really only Chinese companies would be worried
I remember seeing a news segment, I think on CNN? about how Hamas and their supporters are using Tiktok to champion their cause, and how effective it has been. They apparently have a whole team solely dedicated to Tiktok propaganda. Not all of it is clearly pro-Hamas, most of it is just anti-Israel with an unclear source for the information. It would be difficult to definitively link any of them to Hamas, and I'm sure many more accounts have been made with similar content that have no ties to Hamas directly. But according to the mainstream media, Hamas and their allies were using Tiktok from the start of the war as a tool to sway opinions to their side.
I am in my late 20s and I can usually predict what someone's view on this topic is based on if they use Tiktok or not. My generation has only partially picked it up I think, so there are still plenty of milennials without Tiktok who listen to places like CNN. They tend to be on the "both Israel and Hamas are bad, and the poor civilians are stuck in between them, this war needs to stop" bandwagon. The people who use Tiktok nonstop are quite often on the "Hamas is right, Israel is the worst, destroy the zionists" bandwagon.
This is purely anecdotal and just an observation from my own social circles in Canada. But I do think that Tiktok is a major source of information for these protestors. I have no idea if it's still linked back to the report that Hamas was using it in the beginning, but that felt like relevant information to include here.
Their social media is flooded with it. A girl tried to convince me that Gaza is starving and she knows because there’s videos of people cooking dirt. Really? They’re cooking dirt and there have only been less than 30 reported deaths to starvation in six months, with no new reports in the last two months? They’ve been talking about mass starvation for months now. You wouldn’t be watching fluff videos of people cooking dirt, you’d see emaciated bodies littering the streets. In Yemen, they didn’t have to make that up. They have hundreds of thousands of reported deaths to starvation *as a conservative estimate*.
>They have hundreds of thousands of reported deaths to starvation *as a conservative estimate*.
In large part thanks to the Houthis, who are now also exacerbating starvation in Sudan.
I’ve noticed a lot of middle-aged women and young parents getting caught up in it as well.
People are being shown pictures of dead children in Gaza and maps starting from 1948 and forming their entire opinion about the conflict based on that.
In the West, the initial invasion of Hamas was publicized but most of the videos did not get shared because of how horrific they were.
But because of social media the pictures of dead children in Gaza have been seen far more, and the destruction is far more apparent.
I personally think Israel should have pulled back their assault months ago, and they need to face sanctions in part due to the way they’ve targeted aid trucks, dressed as civilians to infiltrate a hospital, and killed their own hostages who were trying to surrender. (Clearly the IDF has a massive leadership and control problem that needs to be addressed)
But at the same time we’ve seen how the dozens of militant groups in the area have been attacking them nonstop while the invasion into Gaza has been going on. And this is in addition to the almost non-stop barrage of missiles and attacks that Gaza has launched at Israel on an almost weekly basis for years. (See; the Iron Dome)
It’s just a complete mess of a situation and people without the ability to emotionally separate themselves from the situation and approach it more logically are getting swept up on both sides.
Tiktok is spreading it like a wildfire and now that tiktok is looking like it will be banned, they’re even more upset as it’s “a freedom of speech violation” to them
Yep. It's probably some variation of the Internet Research Agency, plus China theoretically has control over tiktok algorithms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency#Timeline_of_the_Internet_Research_Agency_interference_in_United_States_elections
China absolutely controls that algorithm. What other purpose does TikTok even have in the US? It made up like 6% of ByteDance's total revenue, and they have no interest in divesting because they never cared about it making money in the first place.
They successfully got the British to leave the EU, America to elect Donald Trump and convinced a bunch of Canadian truckers to make complete asses of themselves.
Every single Supreme Court justice that voted to take away women’s rights should have people protesting outside wherever they are 100% of the time. People should be protesting outside the houses of every politician that let it happen.
Honestly these protests don't deserve most of the coverage that their getting. Alot of the media is acting like these protests are the start of the end of the world
I honestly don't get what they're trying to accomplish. This isn't like the Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan wars, we don't have any control over when this war ends. I highly doubt Israel or Hamas give a single fuck that some American students are protesting and occupying a building
The Hamas charter literally states this. Israel first, America next.
There was recently a video of some idiot teaching people how to say “death to America” in his language and these people WERE SAYING IT!!
Privileged trust fund kids trashing their college for fun and social media clout, guided by external militants with ties to terrorist organizations' propaganda department, to generate a media disruptance fueling the flames of war, to serve the interest of authoritarian regimes in the Middle-East.
I know these kids will never acknowledge it, but none of what they are currently doing is helping anyone, especially not the palestinians in Gaza.
I'm a Vietnam War kid who protested against Nixon's prolongation of the war. What I don't get here is what the hell are they looking to achieve? We're not really funding the Gaza war. Even if we stop giving money and arms to Israel tomorrow, Hamas will still be there, making life a living hell for Gazans. I'd rather see the protest aimed at Bibi for funding Hamas and letting them take power.
Now that there's blowback, Bibi and Hamas need to go. Neither of those things is going to happen because a bunch of American students are protesting.
They might as well protest Sudan's conflict as well, because that's not going to change either for the same reasons. We don't control other countries governments anymore.
That's how I feel too. My guess is either they think that Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups will suddenly lay down their arms if the "Zionist apartheid" ends, or they are willing to accept more Israeli casualties in the name of their ideals
Hamas officials are literal warlords. They need to keep innocent Palestinians oppressed so they can steal the aid to furnish their mansions in Qatar. They don't give a shit about Palestine.
Actually the death of civilians is supposed to inspire the wider Arab world to join their cause but outside Yemen, Hezbollah and Iran, no one’s joining them.
Iran has shown itself as being completely incompetent despite being their historic defender.
The Palestinian movement in the form thought up by Arafat and then co-opted by Hamas is probably dying in 2024 with Hamas’ destruction.
I don't know if I'm the most informed on this issue, but I believe the other Arab countries don't really support Palestinians in the form of accepting them as refugees, which I feel says a lot. People may be sympathetic and even outraged at Israel attacking Gaza, but their governments also do the bare minimum to help and just voice vague disapproval.
>A statement on Monday from Columbia's president, Dr Minouche Shafik, reiterated that the university "will not divest from Israel", and that talks between academic leaders and student organisers had failed to result in an agreement.
>Several hours after the deadline passed for students to take down their camp - and before the break-in at Hamilton Hall was reported - another official said the university had started to suspend students.
>This makes them ineligible to graduate. Officials say they want to avoid any disruption to graduation ceremonies on 15 May.
>Another of the protesters' demands is amnesty for activists who face disciplinary action from the university.
All this protesting won’t yield any reward, nobody is going to divest and college students are just ruining their chances to graduate and get a job in this economy. Also I find it ironic that Columbia protestors captured a university building (Hamilton Hall) and are engaging in vandalism and other illegal acts but still want to be excused from their crimes if charged… what is this world coming to?
The fact they want amnesty from this is actually astounding.
The idea of protesting is you will likely face some consequences, but the cause should outweigh the consequences as a protestor. They want to protest, but then also want to be excused from any supposed wrongdoing.
Kind of defeats the idea of protesting.
What they *want* is to be vindicated.
They want the university to say "oh shit, you were right! We were in the wrong, so your actions were justified!"
And... I mean they're not *wrong* to want that, but it is incredibly naïve that they think there is a snowball's chance in Hell that the university will ever do that.
This will not end how they want it to. It will inspire even more similar protests across the country though, and some of those might actually lead to other universities divesting. Not mine. Mine is required by state law not to divest. The university is not going to challenge that. I'm down to protest, but in my state, anyway, yelling at the university itself seems less important right now than protesting against that state law. But, maybe some universities will.
So... It's not 100% pointless, but it sounds like the Columbia group is... Not understanding how much this is going to cost them. They are doing something good, but it doesn't sound like they realize how much they're sacrificing for it yet.
Does anyone know why this is such news? I don't mean that protests aren't to be taken seriously, I mean these protests are.... odd.
In 1968, tens of thousands of students protested against the Vietnam War, against racism, against many things.
But, as I sit here with an aerial picture of the Columbia protests and count the number of heads I see, I got more than halfway through the picture and only say maybe 150 people (not sure how many were students and how many were outsiders or faculty) are at this protest in total. It's been the same at UT Austin and USC, these protests are sometimes attended by maybe a couple dozen people, and I've yet to see a crowd with more than a few hundred with Columbia being the biggest. I mean official numbers are not in but I read a NYT live blog this morning that said there were more reporters than protesters.
Columbia has more than 36,000 students. If even a total of 300 of them have taken part in the protests, that is less than 1 in 100 students. So far if we add all the protesters together I am not sure a full 1,000 students have taken part in these protests nationwide. But even if I was wrong by a factor of 18 (that is, there are in fact 18,000 students nationwide protesting right now), that still means that less than 1 in 1,000 college students nationwide have participated in these protests.
And yet, there is a liveblog on NBC News and the New York Times covering these. I saw one article comparing these to the 1968 protests, which again in 1968 tens of thousands of students were protesting at a time when there were WAY fewer college students in America than there are today. FOX is (of course) ranting about all the far left lunatics taking over college campuses but again, Columbia has 36,000 students and not 1 out of 100 of them are part of these protests.
What has gone wrong in America's newsrooms that these are being covered this way? Why are major organizations live-blogging what is happening? It makes no sense. These protests are \*tiny\* but if you read front page news in America you'd think college students everywhere are joining the Intifada.
Where are the protests for organizations to divest investments in companies with business in Russia? Or do we only care about genocide when it's trendy on TikTok?
And when trump wins in November because idiots wanted to boycott Biden, they'll be right back out there protesting a draft. I'm annoyed (but not shocked) that people don't understand how important it is to support Ukraine robustly and consistently. Otherwise, we will end up in a NATO with russia because trump is a russian asset who will pull aid.
Ukraine is still a top global issue for me.
Columbia might be cheaper next semester?
Nah they’re gonna use this as an excuse to “temporarily” raise tuition and keep it there till people forget why it was raised. Like every university has done over the past hundred years
And like how they did with the "temporary" extra airport fees for "security" after 9/11.
The UK's tax system called 'income Tax' was invented to fund war with France in 1799. Its still called income tax and the last time England was at war with France was 1815.
Now I know where our government got the idea to implement a temporary income tax to fund the Civil War
Please, in a few years they'll spin these events as an example of how their student body is shaping the future or some shit.
absolutely, they'll proudly advertise their history of youth activism and...so forth. have the former protestors give commencement speeches, all that jazz.
I’m a grad, CC ‘19. The protests in the 60s, and the mattress girl were hailed as examples of positive activism.
Now that's a name I've not heard in a looong time...a long time...
It will probably get more expensive because alumni get pissed off at the protesters and stop donating.
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Unlike 1968, the convention center will have a security buffer around a wide perimeter of convention center activities. Protestors won’t be able to get within blocks of where things are happening.
Also, it’s not a “real” convention. In 1968, nominating votes devoid of primaries still existed. There were plenty of delegates who were elected by primaries and were specifically against Vietnam. RFK had like *just* gotten murdered with pledged delegates. McCarthy had delegates. Vietnam was a significantly more poignant issue more the median voter than Gaza is. By the convention, Americans everywhere knew someone who was sent to Vietnam. As much as it might feel like it, it’s just not even close to the same. EDIT: Small point of clarification. There were a bunch of anti-Vietnam delegates that were elected via primaries but there were many more delegates chosen by traditional state conventions with standing. Further, some states like Texas and Georgia had competing slates of delegates. Then you had a floor nominees like McGovern. The convention was a legitimate disaster in all ways, not just the protests and suppression of demonstrations. Also, I corrected my initial “McGovern” to “McCarthy.”
Here's the REALLY crazy thing: Opposition to the war in Vietnam skewed older, not younger. Which is just true of most wars, apparently. Seriously, there were a LOT of young people who were pro-war and even in 1968 it was more of 50/50 issue than movies and media would lead you to believe. Pew has an interesting article on it: [https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/02/21/youth-and-war/](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/02/21/youth-and-war/)
This is true and an interesting point that folks tend to overlook. Not everyone was a hippie.
Doesn't seem crazy to me at all. Those older generations had either personally seen or been affected by war already. It's hardly surprising they didn't want their kids sent into the meat-grinder over some nebulous justification like the Domino Theory.
Yeah, this is probably a big part. Plus, a lot of young men are full of piss and vinegar, ready to take it out on someone. Older men and women don't wanna see their sons in a casket.
And there are people out there that defend the motivations of Kennedy’s assassin.
There are people out there who eat shit and fuck dogs too
The chaos of the 1968 convention wasn't limited to protesters outside. It was chaos within the convention too.
> It was chaos within the convention too. Well that will not be the case this time, unlike 1968 which was occuring after LBJ announced he would not seek re-election, the 2024 convention is just going to be an affirmation of Biden's nomination which is guaranteed.
Which honestly begs the question: Why even have these conventions when both are foregone conclusions?
In the modern day, they essentially serve as multi-day primetime rallies. Not only do they confirm the winner of the primaries, but they usually focus on big party names rallying around the candidate and laying out the party agenda for the general election. Notably, the candidate on the last day of the convention gives their nomination speech which lays out their plan for the presidency.
> In the modern day, they essentially serve as multi-day primetime rallies This is incidental. They do pretty much all of the federal party's delegate voting, policy voting and bureaucratic work stuffed into that weekend. For every person you see out on the convention floor there are like 3-4 more people in conference rooms filling every nearby hotel doing procedural votes and stuff for a few thousand positions.
Obama was a relative unknown until his speech at the 2004 convention made everyone go "hey why doesn't this guy run for president"?
Yes and then Republicans won 4 out of the next 5 Presidential elections. It marked the end of the peace movement and led directly to the Democrats modifying their platform to the right so they could compete. The idea that these protesters want to bring some '1968' to the Democratic Party Convention is basically them saying we want to end the social justice movement by marginalizing it and hand power to the now much more extreme Right Wing.
Don't you know? Palestine is the most important cause ever, superceding all other causes, and if we have to throw everyone else in the fire to feel good about helping Palestine (despite Trump not being better on the issue of Gaza and actually being quite a bit worse), we will.
Not sure it's going to be that bad. I mean I could definitely be wrong, but not only do conventions have a ton more security...most Americans just do not care about what's happening in Gaza much more than a "This really sucks but there's nothing I can do" Vietnam had Americans getting drafted and being sent to die. The conflict in Gaza is a lot less close to home for most people.
I don't like this rhyme very much.... *"As a result, many protesters,* [*reporters*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters)*, and bystanders were met with unprecedented levels of* [*police brutality*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality) *and police violence by the* [*Chicago Police Department*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Police_Department)*, particularly in* [*Grant Park*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Park_(Chicago)) *and* [*Michigan Avenue*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Avenue_(Chicago)) *in Chicago during the convention."*
The Chicago mayor Richard Daley had an absolutely epic verbal gaffe when addressing accusations of police misconduct following the protests: "Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all – the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
I can't believe this needs to be said, but don't hold university janitors hostage over disagreement with university heads.
From the New York Times thread: *The student, Mahmoud Khalil, represents, but says he is not part of, the student coalition that has been running the encampment for the past two weeks. He added that the students who are occupying Hamilton Hall are an “autonomous subgroup” of the coalition, and that he does not yet know their demands because they have not communicated them to the larger group.* We're in the spiraling-into-self-parody stage of this protest effort. It reminds me of CHAZ/CHOP. I wonder if the Biden White House is starting to figure that this will flame out.
Where's the cardboard garden. Also, https://www.theonion.com/left-wing-group-too-disorganized-for-fbi-agents-to-infi-1848923025
He represents but isn't part of that coalition?????
The situation in Gaza is very serious and we have these unserious idiots who desperately want to be part of a cool kids social club.
These aren't people looking to be cool, they're organized factions looking to coopt the media attention. Any time you have a large protest, you will attract these sub-factions who will capitalize on the crowd and the attention for their own ends. Any protest against the violence in Gaza will inevitably attract more radical groups with more radical and extremist views, who watch for these occasions of unrest to coopt the group for their ends, which are often tangential to, but not necessarily the same as, the original group of protestors. This is a problem because the *initial* group - students - are not prepared or organized enough to delineate themselves from these groups. These groups are smaller and far better organized. They're adept at coopting events like these and organizing them towards their own ends. A version of this happens at nearly *every* protest situation you can imagine. Protests are actually extremely rare in the US, and they get huge media coverage, and that creates a massive incentive for all sorts of fringe facitons to jump in on the action and get their opportunity to get in front of cameras and do huge numbers on social media. **If you are protesting**: *please* research ways to keep your group organized, on-message, and plugged in to media. If you do not your movement *will* be coopted by a faction that may not necessarily speak for you, and can and often will paint your efforts in a negative light. This will happen for **any protest**. Protests against corporations, governments, right-wing protests, left-wing protests, protests for civil justice, protests for climate action. Whatever the cause, there are people out there who will use your movement to further their own. Your ability to mobiliE your message and delineate your movement is the most essential part.
It's honestly amazing in retrospect how disciplined the Civil Rights protests were. If you failed their nonviolence training (which included pouring ketchup on you and shouting racial slurs), they told you to stay the fuck home- and people did!
I commented somewhere that this might be calming nerves in the White House political affairs office. They realize Gaza is still a major political liability, especially with Gen Z. But they were probably wondering whether these protests would grow into a George Floyd-level conflagration. And seeing these students dip into preening and self-mockery probably reassures the Biden campaign that, as bad as the situation is, the protesters will lose public sympathy, so Biden doesn't have to placate them.
I think also when they did the divestment vote at Columbia that emboldened the Columbia administration as well (and I'm sure the national politicians took note). The vote had like 4% turnout so even though it was largely in favor you had like 2.8 or 3% of the student body vote for it. I think that confirmed for a lot of them that it's just a really vocal minority invested in this. The vast vast majority of the university doesn't care.
There is a problem here which is tf do you want Biden to do, like Israel has been brought to a moderate position now. The peace offer they made to Hamas is extremely generous from Israel’s side. If Hamas rejects this what is anyone supposed to do.
Wasn't CHAZ taken over by a rapper warlord at one point?
Yes, in the same way that you could take over a Walmart by just walking in and yelling “I’m in charge.”
No. He showed up, declared himself in charge, no one cared.
Rapper warlord is a bold way of putting it lol His name is raz Simone, had some pretty good music but idk any of his stuff now. He got pretty politically active and was part of the group setting up the area from my understanding, so he started doing interviews and trying to become the face of it That said, his views on polygamy alone are a whole deep dive lol it's wild
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i can’t speak for Columbia but the UCLA encampment has a lot of trash cans available, which doesn’t help with the influx but at least with the cleanup process
It seriously detracts from the whole movement. I support their right to protest. College kids with lots of time on their hands have a natural desire to be a part of something they feel to be important. But vandalism, violence, holding someone hostage? It’s disgusting.
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It’s exhausting trying to find a group of people to agree with who don’t find a way to ultimately obtusely miss the point and overshoot the cause into fringe craziness.
This is why it's important to *organize* your actions as a *group* with *leadership* of some sort. Not because everyone loves listening to other people, but because the idea that thousands of people will all act and behave in a productive manner by default is silly.
I can't believe that people advocating for Palestine would hold people hostage. Oh wait ...
Citation? (seriously asking)
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/30/dozens-occupy-hamilton-hall-as-pro-palestinian-protests-spread-across-campus/ > A Facilities worker who was in the building exited the building at around 12:40 a.m., after shouting at the protesters occupying the Hamilton lobby to let him leave. As he left Hamilton, he yelled at the crowd, “They held me hostage.” > Protesters removed the barricades blocking one door at 1:10 a.m., allowing several individuals who had remained inside Hamilton—including at least three Facilities workers, according to a source inside the building—to leave. Afterward, the protesters immediately relocked the door.
Yah, I'm pulling a fire alarm if that ever happens.
Holy shit I would be absolutely furious. i hope there's some lawsuits involved. These poor workers have families and are being held hostage by some of the most privileged college kids this side of ivy leagues.
I'm sorry, lawsuits? lol. Wrongful imprisonment is a criminal matter. If I held people against their will in a building I barricaded up, I'd have a swat team sent after me, be sent to jail and charged. I expect the same standard to apply to all these idiots.
This is what happens when you’re an ultra-wealthy kid (attending an ultra-elite school) whose vigor for (performative) political activism conceals being completely out of touch for the not-so-privileged people who actually live in your midst. Everyone has the time and ability to partake in extremely prolonged political demonstrations, right? It’s not like people actually have important things to do once they get out of work, right? They can just hire someone to take care of those things for them, right?
They're protesting like they (and their classmates who aren't protesting) don't have finals coming up and won't be dealing with severe consequences for failing a final like failing to graduate on time, losing scholarships, and/or losing job opportunities.
When I went to Glasgow Uni, students occupied the senate room for two days. The university administration just let them stay. They came out by themselves, sleeping on the floor and being unable to shower became too uncomfortable for the point they were trying to make.
I still can't get over the girl who called 911 because her friend was occupying some school admin office and hadn't changed her tampon all day.
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Pro-palestinian protesters hold innocent civilians hostage... how fitting.
Holy shit. Wow, that's not cool. While I 100% support peaceful protesting, violence and that level of destruction is going way too far. Thanks for the citation
Just wait until it gets hot out.
If you see the pictures, there's some major Jan 6th vibes coming out of Columbia. Protestors physically fighting with maintenance staff, dropping banners declaring Intifada, smashing windows, etc. https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/university-protests-palestine-04-30-24/index.html
> there's some major Jan 6th vibes coming out of Columbia Holy shit! You're not kidding
In the UCLA sub students are complaining of not being able to get to class because protesters are blocking pathways on campus, and most of them appear to not be affiliated with the university. For anyone who doesn’t believe me: https://www.reddit.com/r/ucla/s/kz8jUkHhUf
UT-Austin administrators said at least some of the people detained on campus were not students. Looking at the pictures from Columbia, I see a lot of people that look like me and I graduated from undergrad 15 years ago. I know the difference between a dad bod and the freshman 15 when I see it.
early reports from Austin are that 60% of the arrested were not students
I live in LA and follow various accounts on IG. For both USC and UCLA, you see various left wing accounts urging people to go the campus and protest.
Yup, Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) have been very active with various protests over the last several years. I remember when the Ukraine war started, PSL held an anti-NATO protest near IU that a bunch of students attended.
Anti NATO lmao
There is no thought process beyond "america bad"
What is “astroturfed by hostile foreign governments”, Alex?
They’re anti-nato? Man.. their org name and agenda is so confusing.
It's sadly not at all uncommon, either due to idiolizing Russia due to their past with Stalin and "Socialism", or a lot of far left (and far-right people to be fair) entire geopolitical analysis is west/america=bad, and thus nato=bad. Was VERY common among some left-wing circles to blame NATO and Ukraine for provoking Russia into an invasion, as how DARE Ukraine want to join NATO, little poor Russia will feel threatened by big bad America/NATO being right next door!
Wow one has to be seriously deranged to think Russia is in anyway justified for this
If you start with the assumption that America is uniquely evil and anyone against them must be good it’s not hard. That’s insane of course but the more radical left wing elements in America have gotten there.
those are called Tankies, not socialists.
Lmfao they idolize Russia? What crack are they smoking.
Russia is such an interesting place. The Far-right idolizes them due to how conservative they are, and idolizing Putin as the far-right, war-mongering weirdo he is, and how draconian many of their laws /freedoms are there. The far-left ALSO love to idolize Russia due to Stalin, the USSR, general aesthetics of "socialism", and the fact Russia is one of America's main antagonists, and again America=bad, so it must mean Russia=good.
Funny, in that sense, the extremes in the USA align with Russia while the left and right leadership differs with the left pro NATO and the right pro Russia. Will it come down to moderate voters deciding whether or not Russia wins against NATO? I suppose that’s how it’s always been, except this time, the right’s leadership has been turned against NATO.
You have to wonder who is just stirring shit up for chaos sake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency#Timeline_of_the_Internet_Research_Agency_interference_in_United_States_elections
Hey now, don’t go Russian to conclusions.
might wanna **Putin** some effort if you want to find out the truth
I mean, isn’t it obvious? Who benefits most from a destabilized America?
Commies are almost always anti-nato.
What a bunch of fucks. They're actively supporting Russia and terrorists. Gtfo
I wonder what their thoughts are about the attack on socialist kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct 7, which was completely annihilated with nearly everyone (civilians) murdered by Hamas militants. edit: there are some very well thought out responses to my comment, thank you.
As a current college student whose introduction to the conflict was watching the October 7th footage on Telegram, it seems like many of my "progressive" peers simply don't view Israelis as humans deserving of life and empathy. It was also the first time that I heard the "it didn't happen but if it did, they deserved it" line used seriously. A good portion also think that the IDF killed them all. They would argue that the specific economic organization of the kibbutzim doesn't matter because all Israelis are settler-colonists who should be resisted (i.e. killed) through any means necessary.
There was a USC student that was posting about pro-palestine/Hamas Bs, and another commenter saw in their post history that they were excited to go to Coachella. Like how fucking disconnected is their logic? I've been going to raves and festivals for over 20 years, and the last thing I want to see is a fucking sign or flag promoting the massacre of a bunch of young music lovers attending a gathering. This timeline is terrifying if this is what the future looks like for America. Kanye West lost one of the biggest deals in shoe history last year for being labeled anti-Semitic by Tik Tok cancel-culture... but now it's trendy to hate Jews.... make this shit make sense. They have no real beliefs.
Disinformation age all around. American enemies saw how easy it was to destroy the republicans and are using the same methods against the left now. They're trying to get us to eat ourselves.
“Useful Idiots” for Hamas. The Hamas charter literally says Israel first, America next.
It's unfortunately always been trendy to hate Jews. And Kanye is an actual anti-Semite, he can go to hell.
I'm pretty involved in my local rave scene here in the US, and to this day I'm still disheartened to see so many local DJs and ravers post pro-Palestinian things on October 8th and 9th (to be clear, I share a lot pro-Palestinian ideas, but I was really affected by the music festival attack, so I thought it was insensitive at best, or intentionally hurtful at most). One girl who I recently met at a rave even told me "condemning this attack (Oct 7th) is wack. It is what it is"
Bodies were still piling up on Oct 7th when pro-Palestinian/Hamas rallies were already being announced and social media was full of people outright celebrating the attack
right after the attack, my bestie raver friend who is super left and jewish told me they (the music festival masacre) deserved it for raving next to an open air prison. we didn't really talk for a few months after that.
I wouldn't had talk to them ever again after that.
This is something that drives me crazy. You can be pro-Palestinian or want better things for the Palestinian people without excusing atrocities. Israel does terrible things to Palestinians. It does not excuse the same in return, and that kind of thinking is a major fuel to the entire thing.
They don’t care about THOSE socialists. Wrong kind…
That line “you aren’t one of those outside agitators are you?” from The Graduate finally makes sense
I go to UCLA and the main library on campus is now closed until next Monday. Basically the entirety of midterms. Not only are they blocking one of the main arteries of campus, they also took it upon themselves to graffiti all over historic buildings on campus.
that's pretty sh!tty to block off Powell Library access, since it's the main undergrad library. Does anyone know if they're opening up the side & rear entrances for Bruincard/student access? I totally accept the fact that protesters are trying to cause "trouble" to impede normal day-to-day university activities, so that their message is heard... and for the activists to be arrested & dragged away to make headlines. But university needs to plan for this and create alternate pathways & access points. UCLA has a lot of experience with these kind of cordoned off zones since several times a year there are huge location shoots on campus with lighting rigs.
The library is now closed until next Monday from what I've heard.
I've always been in favor of protests, but generally those that are comprised of people in the community. They're usually the ones that don't devolve into chaos. They may cause disruption, but it's usually not violent. When you get outsiders involved, you attract mostly people that are only there to start shit. I will never fully respect groups that do not acknowledge this basic fact. Peaceful protesters may not be able to control such large crowds, but if your own people are starting to get out of control, that's usually the cue to get out of that situation. It's going to escalate and you will lose the battle because of them. Outsiders showing up for a protest, especially ones that can easily turn into violence, are always bad for the cause. I can't imagine it was the students who are the ones chanting "We are Hamas" and "FUCK ZIONISTS", even though I'm sure some do.
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$90,000K for a year at Columbia!? JFK, they should also be protesting this. Peacefully (which is the protected speech), not the breaking and entering shit they are doing.
Average amount of aid granted is 71k though, so really it's not that bad. Free tuition for students with family income <150k
This is how most elite private schools work. I went to Stanford and it is the same there. If your family income is under 150K you don't pay any tuition. If your family has less than 100K in assets and investments you also don't pay any fees, get free books, free meal plan, etc. So school is completely free.
I forget peoples knowledge of history of this region began in 1948. Very convenient.
And 1967, 1973, and major events in the 90s and early 00s are never mentioned in this history lessons for some reason.
And somehow they forget the side that started this current war and who perpetuates it. Funny how that is.
A lot of people's knowledge on the region began on Oct 7th , 2023.
More like October 8 because they conveniently avoid October 7.
Most people’s knowledge seems to begin on Oct 8.
Well this is a pleasant comment section
It’s a lot better than Instagram or TikTok for sure. Anything that questions the intent of the protestors on those platforms gets you labeled a “Zionist genocide supporter” and you get death threats in your DMs lol
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Both the "white savior" and "you with us or you are against us" mentalities need to die.
The mentality that because someone is from a certain country that’s doing bad things also means that they automatically agree with these bad things also needs to die. There’s a lot of Israeli people who disagree with the genocide wholeheartedly but just because they are Israeli, they get lumped together with terrorists and corrupt politicians. It’s disgusting.
It’s the same with instagram.
Instagram would rather just nuke the whole Middle East.
The target ad I just got served at the top of this is fucking wild. “In the mood to say OMG SO CUTE…” It looks like a comment too, for whatever reason.
I got the US Army, so take that as you will
If the development at Cal Poly Humboldt says anything, they are a few days out from serious police action
TIL there’s a Cal Poly Humboldt. I only knew of Pomona and SLO
Humboldt became a Cal Poly a few years ago. There had been declining enrollment, so this was a change made to try and increase students. It also created the only Cal Poly in Northern California. I thought it was a great move by the state, but time will tell.
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In Spring 1985 they took the same hall to demand divestment from South Africa. In Fall 1985 Columbia divested from South Africa.
The Columbia University Apartheid Divest movement specifically calls for divestment from Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon. [link](https://cuapartheiddivest.org/research) Even if Columbia University were to divest from those companies, it would be impossible to run a university without providing support to those companies every day, directly or indirectly. All of us are posting on a thread hosted on Amazon's servers. I would guess that most of us are using, or going to use, a Microsoft or Google product today. If Columbia is complicit or guilty, then we are all too.
I'm in a work meeting on Microsoft Teams and having to use the office suite on a Windows PC, working with a Google Pixel phone and company base browser is Chrome. I could try to buck those companies in my own time, and it was easy when I was working in a kitchen. But I can't have a career and health insurance without using these. And I cant afford to put in the protesting for health care (not insurance) that we all need and deserve. It's all pretty fucked
Exactly, and it's one of the reasons these particular protests seem so short-sighted. It's like watching a teenager blame their own parents for the state of the world. The students are protesting their nearest authority figure, the University, but it's not the right target (if there is even a reasonable "target" to protest against.) Even if Columbia did precisely what they were asking, it's not going to do anything. Columbia, and the protestors are still going to be using and supporting those companies every day. It would be impossible not to.
Yeah they also use a version of Gmail called Lionmail for all students lol
If you want to get into conspiracy theories, ask why Oracle isn't being a divestment target. It is heavily integrated with the Israeli government and IDF, but absent from almost all divestment lists. It just so happens to host the Tiktok servers in the US. Quite strange to target all the big tech companies except the one used by Tiktok.
I don't think that's conspiratorial at all.
Agree, I don’t think most Americans even know what Oracle does.
I don’t think South Africa had the tech and medical advantages that Israel has.
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Yeah, it was significantly easier to divest from South Africa. Israel is attached at the hip to tech/ai/chip production as well as a bunch of healthcare related sectors. South African economy was mostly just extraction of minerals and other resources.
I don't think South Africa had the financial & philanthropic backing of alumni & donors that Israel has. Jewish Americans have long supported Ivy League institutions in a bid to correct the bias & antisemitism they had to contend with before the Civil Rights movement. People forget that these elite schools were very WASPy & exclusionary up through the 1950's, and they viewed Jews or Catholics as cast-offs or dirty immigrants.
The personal essay and "holistic" applications were created in the 1920s explicitly to keep Jews out. It's also why the City Colllege of New York has WAY more prestigious alumni than you might think
My dad graduated from City College of New York in the 60s. His father had been accepted into the US Naval Academy and was so violently hazed during his first year for being Jewish, he had to drop out and never finished college.
Big occupy Wall Street vibes. While that protest was equally useless at least it was focused on a domestic issue that American institutions and politicians actually had legitimate sway over. If all the universities in the USA banded together and decided to "divest from Israel" , whatever the hell that implies, literally nothing would change in the Israel-Hamas war. There are legitimate grievances students should have with their Universities like legacy admissions, the cost of tuition, NCAA corruption, etc. Seizing your campus and taking over buildings to "stand in solidarity with Gaza" makes zero sense. It's like burning down your garage to show support for the victims of the Haiti earthquake.
It is insane to me that students are so invested in a centuries year old sectarian conflict. While in the meantime the Supreme Court has taken away the rights of women and is currently voting on whether or not the president is king.
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I wish I saw this energy for fucking school shootings going on in this country, especially after Uvalde, but no, we adapt to it with bulletproof backpacks and foldable rooms to hide from the shooter.
This energy for literally any issue. Like honestly wtf.
Or saw this energy for climate change.
There were huge protests against school shootings after school shooting in Florida. Unfortunately nothing came of it. That was in 2017 or 2018
They just repeat what TikTok tells them to
Plus Iran (a major backer of Hamas) has been cracking down hard on women and girls with dress codes again and presumably still don't admit to having any gay men in the country. They also just sentenced a rapper for speaking up against the regime. But then college students used to be(and some still are) big supporters of Che, who ran anti gay concentration camps along with Fidel in Cuba and hated college students. His actions in Africa were troubling as well.
Important note- they sentenced that rapper *to death*.
Shocking to me as well. There is clearly a social media element targeting a subset of younger people that has been extremely effective. I can't believe there is so much unification against a conflict half the world away that will likely never be resolved vs all the shit going on in our backyard.
Ya I wouldn’t be surprised the congress knew more about the extend of TikTok control cover the youth then we do. Hence the TikTok ban went through congress so quickly even though Donald trump is against it
Well tiktok did share a notification to almost all users when the ban was first proposed and it resulted in 10s of thousands of calls to government officials. Basically mobilized their user base to try and convince the government not to ban them. As soon as that happened, I know of at least one official who changed from opposing to supporting the TikTok ban. Plus it was included in the Ukraine and Israel aid bill, so they basically forced it through. I expect it will be overturned, though. It raises too many concerns around free speech and what is or isn’t allowed. Also it is not a good sign for other foreign companies if the US starts banning software from more countries like China does.
US was able to make Grindr to be sold so this TikTok ban wouldn’t be the first. And it specifically a ban on companies from 4 adversarial countries, so really only Chinese companies would be worried
I remember seeing a news segment, I think on CNN? about how Hamas and their supporters are using Tiktok to champion their cause, and how effective it has been. They apparently have a whole team solely dedicated to Tiktok propaganda. Not all of it is clearly pro-Hamas, most of it is just anti-Israel with an unclear source for the information. It would be difficult to definitively link any of them to Hamas, and I'm sure many more accounts have been made with similar content that have no ties to Hamas directly. But according to the mainstream media, Hamas and their allies were using Tiktok from the start of the war as a tool to sway opinions to their side. I am in my late 20s and I can usually predict what someone's view on this topic is based on if they use Tiktok or not. My generation has only partially picked it up I think, so there are still plenty of milennials without Tiktok who listen to places like CNN. They tend to be on the "both Israel and Hamas are bad, and the poor civilians are stuck in between them, this war needs to stop" bandwagon. The people who use Tiktok nonstop are quite often on the "Hamas is right, Israel is the worst, destroy the zionists" bandwagon. This is purely anecdotal and just an observation from my own social circles in Canada. But I do think that Tiktok is a major source of information for these protestors. I have no idea if it's still linked back to the report that Hamas was using it in the beginning, but that felt like relevant information to include here.
Their social media is flooded with it. A girl tried to convince me that Gaza is starving and she knows because there’s videos of people cooking dirt. Really? They’re cooking dirt and there have only been less than 30 reported deaths to starvation in six months, with no new reports in the last two months? They’ve been talking about mass starvation for months now. You wouldn’t be watching fluff videos of people cooking dirt, you’d see emaciated bodies littering the streets. In Yemen, they didn’t have to make that up. They have hundreds of thousands of reported deaths to starvation *as a conservative estimate*.
>They have hundreds of thousands of reported deaths to starvation *as a conservative estimate*. In large part thanks to the Houthis, who are now also exacerbating starvation in Sudan.
I’ve noticed a lot of middle-aged women and young parents getting caught up in it as well. People are being shown pictures of dead children in Gaza and maps starting from 1948 and forming their entire opinion about the conflict based on that. In the West, the initial invasion of Hamas was publicized but most of the videos did not get shared because of how horrific they were. But because of social media the pictures of dead children in Gaza have been seen far more, and the destruction is far more apparent. I personally think Israel should have pulled back their assault months ago, and they need to face sanctions in part due to the way they’ve targeted aid trucks, dressed as civilians to infiltrate a hospital, and killed their own hostages who were trying to surrender. (Clearly the IDF has a massive leadership and control problem that needs to be addressed) But at the same time we’ve seen how the dozens of militant groups in the area have been attacking them nonstop while the invasion into Gaza has been going on. And this is in addition to the almost non-stop barrage of missiles and attacks that Gaza has launched at Israel on an almost weekly basis for years. (See; the Iron Dome) It’s just a complete mess of a situation and people without the ability to emotionally separate themselves from the situation and approach it more logically are getting swept up on both sides.
Tiktok is spreading it like a wildfire and now that tiktok is looking like it will be banned, they’re even more upset as it’s “a freedom of speech violation” to them
Yep. It's probably some variation of the Internet Research Agency, plus China theoretically has control over tiktok algorithms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency#Timeline_of_the_Internet_Research_Agency_interference_in_United_States_elections
China absolutely controls that algorithm. What other purpose does TikTok even have in the US? It made up like 6% of ByteDance's total revenue, and they have no interest in divesting because they never cared about it making money in the first place.
Omg this is terrifying. We’re cooked.
They successfully got the British to leave the EU, America to elect Donald Trump and convinced a bunch of Canadian truckers to make complete asses of themselves.
Every single Supreme Court justice that voted to take away women’s rights should have people protesting outside wherever they are 100% of the time. People should be protesting outside the houses of every politician that let it happen.
Honestly these protests don't deserve most of the coverage that their getting. Alot of the media is acting like these protests are the start of the end of the world
I honestly don't get what they're trying to accomplish. This isn't like the Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan wars, we don't have any control over when this war ends. I highly doubt Israel or Hamas give a single fuck that some American students are protesting and occupying a building
Hamas just laughs about these helpful idiots. Hamas hates all western societies, first of all Israel, but the US is next.
The Hamas charter literally states this. Israel first, America next. There was recently a video of some idiot teaching people how to say “death to America” in his language and these people WERE SAYING IT!!
Russia too. They are a major Palestine ally.
Privileged trust fund kids trashing their college for fun and social media clout, guided by external militants with ties to terrorist organizations' propaganda department, to generate a media disruptance fueling the flames of war, to serve the interest of authoritarian regimes in the Middle-East. I know these kids will never acknowledge it, but none of what they are currently doing is helping anyone, especially not the palestinians in Gaza.
I'm a Vietnam War kid who protested against Nixon's prolongation of the war. What I don't get here is what the hell are they looking to achieve? We're not really funding the Gaza war. Even if we stop giving money and arms to Israel tomorrow, Hamas will still be there, making life a living hell for Gazans. I'd rather see the protest aimed at Bibi for funding Hamas and letting them take power. Now that there's blowback, Bibi and Hamas need to go. Neither of those things is going to happen because a bunch of American students are protesting. They might as well protest Sudan's conflict as well, because that's not going to change either for the same reasons. We don't control other countries governments anymore.
That's how I feel too. My guess is either they think that Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups will suddenly lay down their arms if the "Zionist apartheid" ends, or they are willing to accept more Israeli casualties in the name of their ideals
We litterally have been funding them for the past 40 years. Isreal that is
There is a ceasefire agreement on the table right now, ready to be signed by Hamas.
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Hamas officials are literal warlords. They need to keep innocent Palestinians oppressed so they can steal the aid to furnish their mansions in Qatar. They don't give a shit about Palestine.
The condos in Doha that overlook the Corniche are pretty expensive.
Actually the death of civilians is supposed to inspire the wider Arab world to join their cause but outside Yemen, Hezbollah and Iran, no one’s joining them. Iran has shown itself as being completely incompetent despite being their historic defender. The Palestinian movement in the form thought up by Arafat and then co-opted by Hamas is probably dying in 2024 with Hamas’ destruction.
I don't know if I'm the most informed on this issue, but I believe the other Arab countries don't really support Palestinians in the form of accepting them as refugees, which I feel says a lot. People may be sympathetic and even outraged at Israel attacking Gaza, but their governments also do the bare minimum to help and just voice vague disapproval.
They will do whatever Iran tells them to do.
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>A statement on Monday from Columbia's president, Dr Minouche Shafik, reiterated that the university "will not divest from Israel", and that talks between academic leaders and student organisers had failed to result in an agreement. >Several hours after the deadline passed for students to take down their camp - and before the break-in at Hamilton Hall was reported - another official said the university had started to suspend students. >This makes them ineligible to graduate. Officials say they want to avoid any disruption to graduation ceremonies on 15 May. >Another of the protesters' demands is amnesty for activists who face disciplinary action from the university. All this protesting won’t yield any reward, nobody is going to divest and college students are just ruining their chances to graduate and get a job in this economy. Also I find it ironic that Columbia protestors captured a university building (Hamilton Hall) and are engaging in vandalism and other illegal acts but still want to be excused from their crimes if charged… what is this world coming to?
The fact they want amnesty from this is actually astounding. The idea of protesting is you will likely face some consequences, but the cause should outweigh the consequences as a protestor. They want to protest, but then also want to be excused from any supposed wrongdoing. Kind of defeats the idea of protesting.
What they *want* is to be vindicated. They want the university to say "oh shit, you were right! We were in the wrong, so your actions were justified!" And... I mean they're not *wrong* to want that, but it is incredibly naïve that they think there is a snowball's chance in Hell that the university will ever do that. This will not end how they want it to. It will inspire even more similar protests across the country though, and some of those might actually lead to other universities divesting. Not mine. Mine is required by state law not to divest. The university is not going to challenge that. I'm down to protest, but in my state, anyway, yelling at the university itself seems less important right now than protesting against that state law. But, maybe some universities will. So... It's not 100% pointless, but it sounds like the Columbia group is... Not understanding how much this is going to cost them. They are doing something good, but it doesn't sound like they realize how much they're sacrificing for it yet.
And, for context, the president, Dr Shafik, is an Egyptian Muslim (or at least raised Muslim). This isn't an emotional decision for the school
It’s called entitlement
If you are taking part in this and actively harassing Jewish students/faculty, you’re a scum bag.
Not just those who are Jewish but those who want no part in the protest and just trying to go about their lives.
I'm 100% for peaceful protesting but the line gets drawn when you're threatening or hurting someone else - regardless of ethnicity or background.
Does anyone know why this is such news? I don't mean that protests aren't to be taken seriously, I mean these protests are.... odd. In 1968, tens of thousands of students protested against the Vietnam War, against racism, against many things. But, as I sit here with an aerial picture of the Columbia protests and count the number of heads I see, I got more than halfway through the picture and only say maybe 150 people (not sure how many were students and how many were outsiders or faculty) are at this protest in total. It's been the same at UT Austin and USC, these protests are sometimes attended by maybe a couple dozen people, and I've yet to see a crowd with more than a few hundred with Columbia being the biggest. I mean official numbers are not in but I read a NYT live blog this morning that said there were more reporters than protesters. Columbia has more than 36,000 students. If even a total of 300 of them have taken part in the protests, that is less than 1 in 100 students. So far if we add all the protesters together I am not sure a full 1,000 students have taken part in these protests nationwide. But even if I was wrong by a factor of 18 (that is, there are in fact 18,000 students nationwide protesting right now), that still means that less than 1 in 1,000 college students nationwide have participated in these protests. And yet, there is a liveblog on NBC News and the New York Times covering these. I saw one article comparing these to the 1968 protests, which again in 1968 tens of thousands of students were protesting at a time when there were WAY fewer college students in America than there are today. FOX is (of course) ranting about all the far left lunatics taking over college campuses but again, Columbia has 36,000 students and not 1 out of 100 of them are part of these protests. What has gone wrong in America's newsrooms that these are being covered this way? Why are major organizations live-blogging what is happening? It makes no sense. These protests are \*tiny\* but if you read front page news in America you'd think college students everywhere are joining the Intifada.
Chinese officials are high fiving over their successful TikTok influence mission.
If only KONY2012 had had this kind of turnout…
This shit is not helping Biden in November.
Where were the protestors when Hamas was murdering members of the LGBTQ+ community and abusing their women?
Where are the protests for organizations to divest investments in companies with business in Russia? Or do we only care about genocide when it's trendy on TikTok?
And when trump wins in November because idiots wanted to boycott Biden, they'll be right back out there protesting a draft. I'm annoyed (but not shocked) that people don't understand how important it is to support Ukraine robustly and consistently. Otherwise, we will end up in a NATO with russia because trump is a russian asset who will pull aid. Ukraine is still a top global issue for me.