Maryam Alwan figured the worst was over after New York City police in riot gear arrested her and other protesters on the Columbia University campus, loaded them onto buses and held them in custody for hours.
But the next evening, the college junior received an email from the university. Alwan and other students were being suspended after their arrests at the “ Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to calm growing campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
The students’ plight has become a central part of protests, with students and a growing number of faculty demanding their amnesty. At issue is whether universities and law enforcement will clear the charges and withhold other consequences, or whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students into their adult lives.
If they’re unable to get a sealed record at trial, they will be required to disclose all charges leading to conviction on any employment or housing application they complete. It’s horribly prejudicial of our system to allow the assumption that those with convictions are unworthy of employment or housing.
System working as intended. All of this was intended to keep minorities (most black ppl) in a perpetual state of incarceration. Only now the groups deemed undesirable have expanded. We could’ve fixed it decades ago but the majority of this country (white ppl) were fine with it because it didn’t affect them.
The epitome of its not my problem until it is
So listen, I’m not pro Hamas. Killing non settlers at a music festival is just terroristic murder and even killing random settlers is both counterproductive and terroristic even though most of them are very bad people. That said, this framing is ridiculous:
Some demonstrations have included hate speech, antisemitic threats or support for Hamas, the group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking a war in Gaza that has left more than 34,000 dead.
Blaming Hamas for Israel’s slaughter is exactly the same as justifying Hamas’s actions. That’s very much a pro-genocide statement.
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So if the snipers don’t kill them today, they won’t be able to get a job in 20 years.
(I know exactly where that sniper at IU is standing and exactly where the protesters are and it is direct line-of-sight.)
But I was assured they weren’t snipers! Even though we should “treat them like snipers”? Umm so should I bring them coffee or call an artillery mission? Nobody told me whether they were friendly or enemy Not Snipers!?!
I’ve seen a more close-up view of the Ohio one which suggest that might not be a gun, but that is so clearly a gun in the IU one that it’s pretty damn hard to deny.
a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to quash growing campus protests against the genocide in Gaza.
FTFY
Wow this is fuckkkkkked up
Lmao they thought suspending students for exercising their first amendment rights was going to calm things down? We have truly forgotten how to deal with protests in this country without resorting to authoritarianism.
To forget something you have to have known in the first place. The US has a very very long history of trying to smash protests with the law. All the way back to the whiskey rebellion and before.
To be fair the Whiskey rebellion was more of an armed insurrection than a protest. But yeah, point taken.
Based solely on the over-reactions of the authorities, I’m guessing these protests are threatening a lot of money.
Imagine living in a country where the government says fear the other party and their insurrectionists but let them go free and instead arrest protesters. But at least Biden wiggled in some last minute toothless bill about transgender people while “slaying” his opponent with name calling.
Fascism
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It’s a risk that shouldn’t exist when practicing freedom of speech in a peaceful manner.
Not all of them have been peaceful, and it’s still private property and they can ask you to leave, with legal consequences if you don’t. And a lot of the rhetoric and chants have advocated violence.
Is it just to be jailed for protesting genocide?
No. But you wear your arrest like a badge of honor, not ask for your record to be cleaned so you can go back to your capitalist 9-5, and protest on weekends
The consequence should be the inconvenience of protesting. Even if you’re willing to go to jail doesn’t mean you want to.
i’m not really sure how this is unfair. protesting can mean running up against laws and breaking them. the question is whether the cause you’re protesting for means enough to you to accept that.
Because it is unrelated to their studies/work at the university and they shouldnt be attacked for it by their institution/employer for their political views.
just being a student doesn’t give you permission to use college campuses as you want. if you break rules or laws, there’s consequences for that. if you believe that what you stand for is the most important thing, then you accept the consequences as a feature of what you’re campaigning for. If you don’t, then your heart isn’t really in it and you just want to do whatever you want and get away with it because you feel like that’s what you deserve.
I’ll go with colleges are failing their basic mission of providing a safe place to help kids develop into adults. Whether you agree with them or not, the university should be in the business of creating that safe place, helping develop the future, not escalating, not poisoning the future of the kids entrusted to them.
i hear you, but there’s a difference between letting kids develop into adults and supporting students who trespass. You don’t just get to break laws because you’re a student and your school should support you to develop.
