When Will the First Pro-Palestine Protester Get Shot?

Protests are not meant to be orderly

You have to be blind not to see this coming. Students and faculty at a growing number of college campuses are participating in nonviolent actions to bring an end to their institutions’ complicity in the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. 

It’s spreading like wildfire: encampments, marches, building occupations are taking place at colleges large and small.

Meanwhile, forces of reaction are intensifying their rhetoric, all-too-often being supported by stenographers cosplaying as reporters and editors.

Although many are comparing the antiwar and civil rights protests of the 1960s to present day expressions of activism, there is one major difference: there are no identifiable leaders. 

Dissidents have learned the pitfalls of spotlighting individuals. There are no Tom Haydens, or Huey P. Newtons to be cast as heroes. Many participants are donning face masks, not just because they want to hide their faces from authorities, but because of retaliations observed against other individuals.

Authorities try to make leaders into examples, with accusations that rarely get upheld by juries, and if those leaders happen to be non-white they get used for target practice. 

‘Stardom’ can supplant moral outrage in many persons, encouraging behaviors that can be used to discredit organizations and downplay the causes they champion.

So there are no visible leaders; decisions on tactics are often made by consensus following spirited debates. As best they can, protesters are aiming to keep their cause uppermost in the public eye and they don’t see their cause as being driven by a singular issue. 

From the New York Times: (Gift link so you can read the entire article) 

• For most of them, the war is taking place in a land they’ve never set foot in, where those killed — 34,000 so far, according to local health authorities — are known to them only through what they have read or seen online.

• But for many, the issues are closer to home, and at the same time, much bigger and broader. In their eyes, the Gaza conflict is a struggle for justice, linked to issues that seem far afield. They say they are motivated by policing, mistreatment of Indigenous people, discrimination toward Black Americans and the impact of global warming.

• In interviews with dozens of students across the country over the last week, they described, to a striking degree, the broad prism through which they see the Gaza conflict, which helps explain their urgency — and recalcitrance…

• …In interviews, the language of many protesters was also distinctive. Students freely salted their explanations with academic terms like intersectionality, colonialism and imperialism, all to make their case that the plight of Palestinians is a result of global power structures that thrive on bias and oppression.

NBC7 News did a decent job of highlighting some student responses in this area. Again, note the consciousness of being part of a bigger cause:

• Students at UC San Diego established a "Gaza Solidarity" encampment on the campus' Library Walk Wednesday, joining dozens of universities around the world where students maintain pro-Palestinian sites.

• The UCSDivest Coalition, organizers of the campaign, is calling on UCSD to "end their silence and publicly condemn the destruction of over 80% of schools and all 12 universities in Gaza in a systematic dismantling of infrastructure that UN experts have termed scholasticide," a statement from the organization reads.

• "As a Jewish American student, I stand with the many Jewish, Palestinian and people of all backgrounds that demand divestment from the occupation and genocide of the Palestinian people," said Rachel, an undergraduate majoring in biological anthropology. "We are inspired by the Black civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam — to repair the world — to call for a free Palestine.

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The panic stricken rhetoric and tone being offered by those opposing the student protestors leaves plenty of room for irrational anger, a sure precursor to violent retaliatory responses by individuals. It’s only a matter of time and opportunity until gunfire becomes part of the scene. 

The establishment types being dismissive or painting demonstrators with the ugly brushes of antisemitism/terrorism, of course, will say their words had nothing to do with the violence. 

Now that the Biden administration has made their condemnation of campus protests clear, I expect even more violence. I can fathom why they’re doing it (for politics); I just can’t understand how they expect this will restore law and order. If anything, the protests will become more popular.

Witness UCLA, where authorities stood by for hours as a group of vigilantes physically attacked an encampment. Twenty four hours later, law enforcement attacked the victims from the previous night with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Right wing media broadcast images of the area after police forced the students off, suggesting the litter was proof of just how bad these protesters were. I suppose the police could have handed out trash bags as they clubbed and shot rubber bullets at the crowd.

Too many media organizations were complicit with these assaults, portraying events as violent clashes when in fact people were being attacked. (Of course they defended themselves; you try getting dragged by the hair or being clubbed and not reacting.)

Things are to the point where occupying a building, which has a long tradition of being used as a means of protest, is declared to be a violent act. The NYPD, unable to identify any of the outside agitators they claimed to be leading protests at Columbia University, displayed a bike chain (sold by university retailers) as evidence of weapons being brought to campus to be used in violent assaults.

UPDATE: The NYPD now says half those arrested were outsiders. They got there by including persons arrested at City College, arrests made on  surrounding streets, and counting faculty arrestees as outsiders.

To be fair, there are bound to be assholes in any large group. I have no doubt that antisemitic slurs have been directed at Jewish students in some instances. But the demonstrators are not gathered for the purpose of name calling or Jew hating; they’re opposing the warlike manifestation of Zionism. They’re saying the institutions they participate in need to stop enabling an indiscriminate slaughter of civilians.

How people react to the term Zionism is key to understanding both the actions and the reactions seen around the world. I’ll bet that people on the extremes of both sides here would agree that Zionism carries with it the implication that some people are better or more entitled than others.  

To oppose Zionism is not the same as being antisemitic. 

Congresswoman Sara Jacobs has taken a brave stand in this regard, voting against the latest example of performative legislation advanced for (mostly) personal political gain.

H.R. 6090, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, would end federal assistance to institutions who do not adhere to a narrow definition of the term. It was widely understood to serve the purpose of punishing non-violent protestors speaking out against the Israeli military’s conduct.

Jacobs and many of those opposing the bill (it passed 320-91) felt that it conflated free speech and hate crimes. And let’s face it, an upwelling of opposition to antisemitism hasn’t occurred as known neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers have made their way up the ranks of the MAGA movement. Students start protesting and, voila!, suddenly it’s an issue needing immediate attention.

Via CNN:

• Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York said during floor debate on the bill Wednesday, “There is no excuse for bigotry, threats or violence directed at anyone, anywhere, and it is imperative that we confront the scourge of antisemitism, and Congress can help, but this legislation is not the answer.”

• “Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination,” the congressman said. “The bill sweeps too broadly.”

Here's a snip from a statement released by Rep. Jacobs following the House vote:

• “As a Jewish woman, I’ve experienced antisemitism all my life,” Jacobs said in a statement following the bill’s passage in the lower chamber. “I’ve been called a kike while I was waiting for a drink at a bar when I was at college. I’ve heard too many ‘jokes’ to count about my frizzy hair and my big nose.”

• “I remember my classmates who thought it was funny to say people were ‘being Jewed’ when someone was being frugal,” she continued. “I know the hatred and ignorance that lie behind all these comments, and how they can quickly escalate into violence — and I’m deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in San Diego and across the country.” 

• The California Democrat said she supports Israel’s right to exist but that she knows many who question that and are “deeply” tied to Judaism. 

I’ll add that the bill will not make it to the floor in the Senate, in part because two-thirds of that body isn’t up for reelection in the fall.

Sen. Barry Sanders: 

• "I suggest to CNN and maybe some of my colleagues here, maybe take your cameras, just for a moment, off of Columbia and UCLA . Maybe go to Gaza, and take your camera to show us the emaciated children who are dying from malnutrition because of Netanyahu's policies."

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Thursday’s Noteworthy News Links

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Diary of a Transit Miracle - Congestion Pricing is Coming to New York by Charles Komaoff at the Washington Spectator

• Which cities will follow on New York’s heels? No U.S. urban area comes close to our trifecta of gridlock, transit and wealth. Sprawling Los Angeles or Houston, or even Chicago for that matter, might be better served by more granulated traffic tolls than New York’s all-or-none model.

• Perhaps Asia’s megalopolises will be swept up in our wake. In the meantime, my focus will be on the holy grail of externality pricing: taxing carbon emissions. Every economist knows that the surest and fastest way to cut down on a “bad” is by taxing it rather than subsidizing possible alternatives. Yet that approach remains counter-intuitive and even anathema to nearly everyone else.

• A huge and important legacy that New York congestion pricing could provide is to prove that intelligently taxing societal harms need not be electoral suicide. This proof could help unlock a treasure-trove of prosperity-enhancing pricing reforms including, most prominently, robust carbon taxing.

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In This Police Youth Program, a Trail of Sexual Abuse Across the U.S. via The Marshall Project (No drag queens found)

• Lack of oversight was partly responsible for the abuse, The Marshall Project investigation found. In many programs, armed officers were allowed to be alone with teenage Explorers. In a few instances, departments minimized or dismissed the concerns of those who reported troubling behavior, records show.

• The officers accused of abusing teenagers spanned the ranks, from patrolmen to police chiefs. Some were department veterans cited in news articles for their community work. A handful had served their agencies for barely a year. And some were married men with families of their own.

• Many cases led to criminal charges. Some officers went to prison, while others received probation or weren’t required to register as sex offenders. A few departments allowed officers to keep their jobs after a reprimand or short suspension. The Marshall Project’s analysis found at least 14 departments, among 111 agencies, that had a history of repeated allegations.

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Immigrants are saving the American economy by Judd Legum & Tesmin Zekeria at Popular Information

• In 2023, the US economy grew at a 2.5% rate, "outpacing all other advanced economies." The US is on track "to do so again in 2024." This is only possible because of a substantial increase in immigration.

• Since February 2020, there has been no net job growth among native-born Americans. One reason is that the native-born workforce is flat or shrinking. Baby boomers are retiring, and birth rates remain low. But there has been substantial job growth in the US since February 2020 because more immigrants are working. 

• A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reveals that contrary to conventional wisdom, the immigrant workforce in America benefits native-born workers. The study concluded that "immigrants raise wages and boost the employment of U.S.-born workers." This is especially true for native-born workers with less education. The study found that "immigration, thanks to native-immigrant complementarity and college skill content of immigrants, had a positive and significant effect between +1.7 to +2.6% on wages of less educated native workers, over the period 2000-2019 and no significant wage effect on college educated natives."