UCSD: Campus Closed, Encampment Gone, Arrests Made

Local right wing cries as no actual violence reported

In recent years, UCSD has permitted a “Justice for Palestine Week” in May. That ain’t happening this year. 

Just as there will be no justice for tens of thousands pouring out of neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city of Rafah with no place to go in advance of a ground invasion by Israeli forces.

Calling the Gaza Solidarity encampment “an unacceptable safety and security hazard on campus," Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla had earlier called for participants to peacefully disperse.

The UCSDivest Coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and Students for Justice in Palestine organized the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on campus last week to show support for Palestinians amid a spiking death toll in Israel’s war against Hamas.

On Sunday several hundred students marched past the encampment carrying banners supporting the hostages, carrying Israeli flags. As has been true with other counter demonstrations, right wing agitators joined the crowd. One guy seen at the head of the march has been accused of inciting violence at demonstrations along the border. 

On Monday, shortly after 6am a police force of more than 200 including California Highway Patrol, San Diego and Orange County Sheriffs and campus police began moving to the perimeter of the encampment. Following a cursory inspection behind the temporary barricades, (looking for, I’m guessing, booby traps) law enforcement began dismantling tents, pushing back students passively resisting their advance.

Snipers were deployed on rooftops overlooking the area, and some police carried shotguns of the type used for “non lethal” ammunition.

The campus was closed; transit service was interrupted, blockades were set up at entrances, and the university announced that all classes would be online for the day. Non-essential employees and suppliers were turned back. While the TV stations were announcing that retail and dining locations were already open, those that could find staffing opened as the morning progressed.

At 7:30 am the authorities announced that the encampment had been dismantled, and arrests began in earnest. Participants detained were zip tied and led into the Price Center for processing. News camera footage of the arrests indicated there was no resistance being offered. 

Later in the morning, dozens gathered in front of the student union in an effort to keep police from taking those arrested off campus. A line composed of officers from various police agencies pushed through the crowd, allowing arrestees to be taken away.

From the Union-Tribune coverage:

• David FitzGerald, a sociology professor at UC San Diego, questioned the university’s handling of the protesters and called the statement Khosla issued Sunday “a cynical lie” used to justify “a violent oppression of peaceful speech by heavily armed police.”

• FitzGerald, who has taught at UCSD since 2007, said the university encourages students to be changemakers.

• “Clearly what is happening in Gaza right now with U.S. support is one of the world’s most pressing issues,” he said. “Our students are drawing attention to this, but we are responding by sending in the police to attack them and drag some of them off to jail, when they are really doing what we’ve asked them to do as educators.”

It matters not that the protest at UCSD was non-violent; there will be characterizations of the encampment as violent by people who believe that voicing unpopular and or radical opinions are terrorist acts.

Additional notes: UCSDivest is distributing flyers calling for the immediate release of “30+” students arrested on Monday. \UAW 4811, the union representing many University of California employees, has called for a vote authorizing its executive board to call a strike in response to the way the UC system has treated protestors. 

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One thing worth remembering about universities choosing to shut down encampments (some of which started months ago) is that there was no talk of violence until Columbia University President Minouche Shafik was ambushed by House Republicans.

From Inside Higher Ed:

• Columbia University President Minouche Shafik carefully and repeatedly condemned antisemitism over the course of a nearly four-hour appearance before Congress on Wednesday. She denounced the speech and actions of some pro-Palestinian professors and student protesters. She made clear under questioning that she considers the oft-changed slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to be antisemitic, though she noted that other people don’t hear it as such.

• But judging from the responses she received from Republicans on the House education committee, none of that might be enough to keep Shafik or Columbia—or its faculty members—from further Congressional scrutiny.

Further scrutiny actually meant unleashing the MAGA hate machine and putting the Columbia Student protest in the national spotlight in the most negative way possible. Repeated characterizations of poor behavior at that encampment cleared the way for justifying a D-Day sized police invasion of the campus.

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On the other side of the world, Hamas announced that they accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal. There was no initial reaction that Israel was willing to accept these terms, and the feeling that it was too little too late for Palestinians.

The news site Haaretz reported Hamas sources as saying they received guarantees that Israel will not renew the war in Gaza at the end of this truce. This has prompted widespread cynicism about prospects for peace.

While there have been massive demonstrations in Israel against the Netanyahu government, right wing politicians have been openly calling for genocide.

"I think we should've gone into Rafah yesterday already... There are no uninvolved (civilians) there. You have to go in and kill and kill and kill... We have to kill them before they kill us"

That's Shimon Boker, vice chairman of the World Likud, the international arm of Netnayahu's party. This is what he had to say three days ago, on Channel 12's "Ofira & Levinson" talk show, regarding the topic of hostage deal vs. Rafah invasion.

The US reportedly halted the latest arms shipment for Israel, which may well have been because of advance notice about a ground invasion of Rafah. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who voted against sending aid to Israel, rushed out a statement condemning the cutoff because… Republicans have no shame.

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Where all these developments will lead as I approach deadline is unclear. But I think this analysis from columnist Will Bunch is worth sharing:

• Nobody is going to like the way out of this mess, because it requires the nearly impossible — mixing pragmatism with an almost hopeless idealism. The pragmatism means a painful moral choice of ignoring Biden’s near-fatal blind spot on sending bombs to Israel by clinging to the good — such as his support for reproductive rights — and voting for him in November as the only real option for stopping Trump. In the alternate world of a Trump victory, the necessity for continued protest, for accountability journalism, and for future fair elections will be crushed.

• The hopeless idealism is using the four years of constricted breathing space that a Trump defeat would offer to start rebuilding our shattered America from the ground up, and begin electing some candidates who believe that the First Amendment is paramount, who see that higher education — when it can be done right — is a public good, and who can build a society that isn’t reined in by repressive warrior cops. I don’t know if that’s possible, but I know the horror that awaits if we do nothing.

• The last two weeks have been awful but also a moment of clarity. People of good conscience should stop deluding themselves that saving American democracy is only a matter of defeating Trump at the ballot box. It turns out that those who pay the greatest lip-service to freedom — overpaid college presidents and news anchors, or self-serving members of Congress — are also the first to call in the riot police on those trying to exercise it. Trump is wrong about almost everything but he was 100% right about this: When it comes to dictatorship, there are a lot of people who like it.

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Monday News You Should Read

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Trapped, tired, weak: Trial shatters Trump's image via Framelab

• “There are certain things that strict fathers cannot be: A Loser, Corrupt, and especially not a Betrayer of Trust,” Dr. Lakoff wrote in 2016.

• This trial provides a chance for a jury of Trump’s peers to rule that he is indeed all three of these things. History has taught us that we cannot rely on juries in high-profile cases, but even being put in this position is a loss for him and a win for those who care about equality under the law.

• Dr. Lakoff also reminded us that we can’t be “merely negative.” 

• He insisted that Democrats highlight “the majority's positive moral view and viewing the problem with Trump from within the majority's positive worldview frame. To effectively fight for what is right, you have to first say what is right and why.”

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Talk of an Immigrant ‘Invasion’ Grows in Republican Ads and Speech via The New York Times

• The word invasion has appeared in 27 television ads for Republican candidates — accounting for more than $5 million in ad spending — ahead of the November 2024 election, according to early April data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. That surpasses the 22 uses of the word during the entire 2022 midterm cycle, which totaled nearly $3.3 million in ad spending. During the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, advertisers spent just under $300,000 in four ads that deployed the term.

• America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group, has tracked the word’s rise in Congress. The group has collected at least 20 examples of Republicans using it in floor speeches this legislative session, up from seven during the last session and none before that. The term appears in four pieces of legislation this year, compared with seven last year and three in 2022.

• Analysts who study political rhetoric and extremism have continued to raise alarm that the word invasion and what they describe as similarly inflammatory language regarding immigration plays into replacement theory. The racist doctrine, which has circulated in far right-wing corners of the internet, holds that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans. The shooters in Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo echoed the theory in online posts, and targeted Jews, Hispanics and Black people in their killings.

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Antifa. Public Enemy Number One? At The Jumping Off Place by Doug Porter. Wait a moment! That’s Me! Am I writing two stories on Mondays? Why yes, yes I am.

• District Attorney Summer Stephan has the distinction of getting the first ever convictions of people accused of being Antifa in the nation.

• Wow! Proof that Antifa, the force accused of leading the assault on democracy on January 6, exists, right? Wrong. 

• There is no organization of any kind called Antifa, except in the minds of misinformation and rage harvesting trolls and a few Fox News types.

• There are no meetings or membership requirements. There is a philosophy that sort of matches up. Those beliefs weren’t on trial, but that was the word authorities wanted in the headline. What was achieved was validation of a myth used to tar causes the right deems unpalatable.