Don’t Talk to the Man: Telling the Story of Pro-Palestine Encampments
More than 2,000 people have been arrested as pro-Palestinian protests have swept U.S. campuses over the past three weeks. Coverage of the breakup of the encampment at UCSD generally included descriptors implying violence, like clash, skirmishes, crackdown.
The trash left behind after police removed tents and other structures included “wood stakes.” a “sword” and, most useful of all for fear mongers, a “propane tank.” All this chatter was being used to create the public perception that violence was imminent.
In the grand scheme of things, what happened at UCSD was a blip in the big story, namely that something really bad is happening in Gaza. Only two of the nine UC undergraduate campuses (the other being UCLA) have deemed it necessary to call for police intervention.
At the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, police actions in the vicinity of 2017’s infamous “Jews will not replace us” protest invoked memories of the school administration’s studied case of inaction.
Here’s Jonathan Katz, in When the Hammer Came Down at UVA:
At one point, the frat boys, the amateur police enthusiasts, and the hardcore Israel stans all merged into a chant of "Arrest them! Arrest them! Arrest them!” I looked up from the melee to see the chant coming from people waving Israeli flags on the hillside; chants for violence coming from the same hillside where, seven years earlier, neo-Nazis had marched with torches and chanted, with equal fury, “Jews will not replace us.” Except this time, they were the counter-protesters, and excitedly waving Stars of David.
As I said, this juxtaposition was not lost on the crowd. One guy got a chant of “Where were you in 2017!” going at the police, which lasted a few rounds. But given that the answer for most people was “in middle school,” or at least, “not in Charlottesville,” it soon petered out. The next hour or so went more slowly, as mist turned into a steadier rain. Most onlookers lost interest. Some, including faculty, stayed to gawk and ponder what had just happened, as the police slowly pushed us onto University Avenue. At one point, a new protester I’d never seen before showed up with a bullhorn, announcing the students should go to President Ryan’s house to protest him. But there was no appetite. At 5 p.m., a final dispersal order was delivered, and the remaining holdouts went their separate ways, the crowd atomizing into individuals, making their way to their Saturday night plans.
The situation at Columbia University got presented from an insiders’ perspective, as New York Magazine gave The Daily Spectator, the student newspaper, the task which ended up as a special report
From Oliver Darcy’s Reliable Sources interview with student editor Isabella Ramirez:
"There is significantly more trust of us than national outlets who parachute in and maybe don't have the intimate knowledge," Ramirez told me.
"We have been covering this since October 7. We have been here before, during, and we will be here after," Ramirez added. "And I think what that means is we have cared about this storyline even before the peak of escalation. And so we spent months forming our connections with the organizers."
For the journalists at The Spectator, offering the campus community an unrelenting stream of updates about the tense and politically polarizing situation carried with it a strong sense of duty. And so, they have spent the last several weeks pouring their souls into the coverage.
The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan visited Columbia and got nothing but grief. Wonkette, which has always taken pleasure in skewering the grand dame of martini-based reporting, imagined a situation where the columnist conjures up the ghost of beat poet Alan Ginsberg.
“The kids haven’t wanted to speak to a condescending old woman, you say? Hard to believe.” Ginsberg looked down at his outfit and sighed. “I get that you probably mostly hung around squares in the Reagan White House, but why are you imagining me wearing this? Not all leftists in the sixties and seventies dressed like Nepalese monks.”
From Noonan’s column: Unlike protesters of the past, who were usually eager to share with others what they thought and why, these demonstrators would generally not speak or make eye contact with members of the press, or, as they say, “corporate media.”
“Peggy, pardon me wigging out, but what in the damn hell do you think The Wall Street Journal is, if it is not corporate media? It’s owned by Rupert goddamn Murdoch. It’s for total squares! These kids associate it with the old man complaining about his 401k. They all watched Succession, they’re hip to what’s going on. Say, you gonna bogart that coffee?”
All of this brings me to a text I received from NBC7’s Omar Fleming (quality reporter, IMO), asking if I had any contacts with persons who could provide a student’s perspective on the UCSD encampment/breakup.
I replied in the negative, saying I couldn’t think of anyone …because UCSD employees have jobs and former occupants of the encampment have enough problems now. And that’s a big part of the reason why we hear and see mostly quotes from authorities in these types of situations.
The fact is these days that getting one’s name in media accounts about controversial issues is a risky proposition. A dedicated group of internet trolls are “documenting student protests” with the aim of making sure they’re unemployable in the future. The fact that everything we do is documentable is why “leaders” of protest movements are few and far between these days.
(I’m really lucky that decades of my assholiness aren’t available.)
Then there’s the question of perceived bias in traditional media; most students don’t know (or care about) the difference between KUSI/Fox (a likely troll trap) and the Union-Tribune (which nowadays has real reporters looking for real stories).
Maybe someday, after most reporter’s jobs are taken over by artificial intelligence, there will be a subsidized market for licensed and bonded rental spokespersons. The County of San Diego could maybe redirect some of the millions of dollars it spends on public relations (probably the largest “newsroom” in the city) to this worthy cause.
Side Note: Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker got swatted on the day that he testified at the Trump trial.
Final Note: At Zeteo, please check out A Diary of a Palestinian Living in Israel written by a former legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiation team for a perspective you might not have heard. (In other words, somebody who might escape being branded as a Hamas propagandist)
…A recent opinion poll shows that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis – 94% – believe the Israeli military has used “adequate or too little force” in Gaza. About 88% of Jewish Israelis believe the number of Palestinians killed or wounded in Gaza is justified. These are astonishing figures given the apocalyptic scale of death and destruction that Israel has meted out on Gaza and its people.
A friend warned me not to say anything to my neighbor. “Don’t express dissent,” she told me. “Your neighbor will just report you to the police.” My friend is right to worry. Alongside the genocidal frenzy, Israel has taken measures to crush any domestic dissent, including banning protests, passing a law to shut down Al Jazeera, and going after those who dare speak out against genocide, including professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian.
Since Oct. 7, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested for “incitement” and “supporting terrorism” as expressions of solidarity with Gaza are characterized, speaking out against Israeli state crimes, and, in some cases, for writing Quranic verses. Students – ratted out by fellow classmates – have been disciplined by their colleges or universities for “liking” social media posts, while those who openly advocate genocide remain free to do so. Armed militia groups patrol Israel’s streets and social media posts and report Palestinians, including doctors and professors, to police.
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Tuesday’s Other News to Think About
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The Father of the 15-Minute City Doubles Down on His Vision via Bloomberg
When Carlos Moreno first introduced the phrase “15-minute city” at COP21 in 2015, it would have been hard to imagine that nine years later, he’d find himself vilified and threatened across the world, his concept for sustainable urban planning attacked by figures as wide-ranging as Jordan Peterson and Rishi Sunak.
“I had to have a police escort in Argentina because someone literally threatened to cut me into pieces,” said Moreno, a professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. “The main gist of these criticism is, as you say in English, insane — eco-skeptic, anti-vax, anti-digital. There are people who have called me the new Pol Pot, the new Stalin.”
In particular, Moreno’s vision of cities that de-emphasized private car use and encouraged more walking to nearby amenities made the model a target for critics who opposed urban vehicle restrictions — or who harbored fears of far-more far-reaching social engineering efforts.
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Abortion Bans Are Empowering Abusive Men by Jill Filipovic
The anti-abortion movement seems to be putting a particular focus on men who object to their current or former partners having abortions. And look, in an ideal world, every pregnancy would occur between two people in a healthy relationship who wanted it. But that is not the world we live in. In this world, a great many women are impregnated by men who are controlling or abusive. In this world, abuse routinely scales up when a woman becomes pregnant, and pregnant women who are not able to end their pregnancies wind up much more likely than women who have abortions to remain tethered to abusive men. In this world, murder is a leading cause of death for pregnant women.
The anti-abortion movement wants to hand more power to abusive men anyway.
And think about it: What kind of man hires a lawyer and attempts to use the legal system to prevent his ex from ending a pregnancy? Men are of course entitled to whatever complicated feelings they have about abortion, including being sad, angry, or upset if a partner or former partner ends a pregnancy and they hoped for a different outcome. But rational, stable, decent men do not bring down the full force of the law on women who refuse to have their babies. The kind of men who use the legal system to punish women who won’t reproduce for them? Those men are abusers. That behavior is abuse.
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Why Highway 1 is the climate challenge that California can’t fix via The Washington Post
Others foresee a day when such investment becomes foolish and preservation becomes impossible. Cheryl Hapke helped lead study of the geology beneath Highway 1, spending 22 years as a USGS research scientist working closely with CalTrans in studying landslide risks. By now, she said, communities continually finding themselves stranded may need to think about relocating.
“I’m not saying do it tomorrow, but at some point, the conversation probably has to be had,” said Hapke, now a Florida-based principal consultant in coastal resiliency for Fugro, an environmental consulting firm.
“We’re living with what we’ve created in this changing climate,” she added. “There’s answers. They’re not easy.”
