Report from the Columbia student occupation

I’m a Columbia student and a member of Behind Enemy Lines who was suspended after being arrested at the occupation that started on April 17^th, 2024.

I. THE CAMP

At four in the morning on April 17^th, a group of students clad in masks, keffiyehs, and head-to-toe black clothes pitched our tents on Butler Lawn at the center of the Columbia University campus to protest Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, calling for Columbia University to divest from Israel. While a few Public Safety rent-a-cops watched in confusion, we set up camp, with a ring of tents and camping toilets surrounding a large tarp with all our supplies. Then, blowing in the wind, a Palestinian flag, and a banner: GAZA SOLIDARITY ENCAMPMENT. LIBERATED ZONE.

The name “Liberated Zone” itself is an explicit reference to the infamous Columbia student strike and occupation of 1968. That protest, against Columbia’s participation in the US war of aggression against Vietnam and Columbia’s expansion into Harlem, is rightfully remembered for its own student militancy and sparking a wave of further student protests that culminated in the 1968 DNC protests and the mass student uprisings in 1970, including the burning of multiple campus ROTC buildings. At the peak of the 1968 Columbia protest, the university president was held hostage for 24 hours. The uncompromising anti-imperialist rebellion of that protest has been sorely missing from the performative protests and begging-the-rulers all too common in protests moments in the US.

Bringing together students from over forty different organizations, promising a higher level of militancy and resistance than the usual “march-chant-leave” protest cycle had been, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment was planned as a show of force and protest against Columbia. University President Minouche Shafik was notably absent that day, since she was prostrating in front of Congress about “antisemitism on college campuses” That ridiculous hearing, part of a fascist witch hunt against free speech, is only one part of a made-up crisis claiming that Palestine activism on campus is antisemitic. While the president was covering up a genocide, we were exposing one. That was no coincidence, but tactical adeptness that has been lacking from the student movement until now.

Our demands included full disclosure of investment and divestment from the Israeli weapons contractor Elbit, an end to the dual degree program in Tel Aviv, and full amnesty for all students facing disciplinary action for pro-Palestine protest. We were preparing to disrupt university operations and put our bodies on the line to stop it from functioning entirely until our demands were met. We knew it was far more likely that the university would arrest us than meet our demands, since their bottom line is maintaining the status quo and keeping donations from Zionists flowing. We anticipated arrest and prepared ourselves. At a time when people prioritize safety and radical phrase-mongering over effective protests, we weren’t going to back off when they brought in Public Safety or the pigs. We were going to escalate.

II. THE PIGS

The first time we were told that the police were coming to sweep us, it was 11 in the morning on April 17^th. We’d held our camp for 7 hours at that point, and as we were milling around eating breakfast, we received word that the cops were gathering outside with their vans. Evidently the university expected us to be scared off, to evacuate at the thought of losing our cushy student housing or having to spend a scared-straight night in prison. But the people in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment stood strong, making good on one of our favorite chants – the more they try to silence us, the louder we will be!

After an hour with no arrests, we’d successfully called their bluff. The police backed off. The camp relaxed, though we made sure to maintain our numbers and our guard, calling on people both on campus and from other organizations to come protest by the lawn and help us hold the line. Unfortunately, some of the forces that came have worked to keep the protest movement behind police barricades, like the PSL and their fancy midtown office, The People’s Forum. Despite that, the protest and picket outside grew. The chants became more radical – my personal favorite, long live the Intifada picked up steam. This was different than the mood in November, when that chant was suppressed by yellow-vest-megaphone-wielding campus activist protest police. One has to note that if one in every hundred people chanting that the only solution was intifada revolution took notes from what the First and Second Intifadas actually entailed, protests in the United States would take on a remarkably different character to the usual police-sanctioned parade-marches.

Notices were sent out, both by email as well as to our liaison, that we’d be at risk of suspension if we remained on the lawn. Then, when that didn’t scare us off, university representatives went around handing out leaflets telling us all that same information. Over the next 24 hours as we marched, chanted, sang, painted, and strategized, we were faced with the exact same threat three more times. We didn’t give a fuck. We could tell the university was scared of deploying the NYPD to arrest its own students on its own campus, not because they didn’t want us out of there, but because it would result in even more outrage. By not backing down, we forced the university into a very uncomfortable scenario that has exposed and embarrassed them and won people over to taking serious action.

At 1pm the next day, April 18^th, Minouche Shafik had finally had enough, and took the unprecedented step of deploying the shock troops of the NYPD against her own students.

III. THE AFTERMATH

When I got out of jail, I found out that after we were arrested, a massive crowd of students had mobilized, pushed past the cops, and taken over the lawn opposite the one we’d occupied. Though this second occupation was less organized and prepared than ours had been, students held it down, and even as I write this, students are chanting on the lawn and bringing food and blankets to those sitting in the second “liberated zone”.

Follow-up from the university was harsh, pathetic, and embarrassing. One by one, students are being suspended in alphabetical order, kicked out of their dorms with an email. A honeypot of students’ confiscated clothes, electronics, and medicine that they’d left on the lawn was set up so that students could be immediately suspended as they go pick it up. Hilariously, the NYPD put out a statement setting the record straight that Minouche Shafik herself had called the police on protesters, who they described as being “peaceful” and “offering no present danger”. Far from being a benevolent force, the NYPD’s statement reveals the contradictions within the enemy camp. Our occupation was a bigger problem for Columbia than it was for the cops. They’ll still do the dirty work because they know who they serve, but the move itself was made out of desperation. The ruling class’s ideological forces (like universities) and its repressive forces (like the police) are usually aligned, so we should take advantage of the instances where they’re split or their unity is weakened.

IV. TAKEAWAYS

The most important thing for anyone to take away from this occupation and its continuing impact, and the students it seems to have inspired around the globe, is the necessity of stepping out of the bounds of “acceptable” protest. “Acceptable” always translates to “ignorable”, to “not a threat to the current way of things”. If the genocide in Gaza is going to be ended, protests for Palestine are going to need to become more militant, more fearless, more prepared to stand up to repressive forces. Leftist groups and their fetishization of safety and comfort forget one important thing – to be attacked by the enemy is not a bad thing but a good one. In fact, any protest that does not face some degree of repression, of pushback, and yes, of violence, is a state-sanctioned party with watermelon decorations.

Furthermore, this action drove home who our friends and enemies are. Students mobilized in great numbers – though not all were willing to risk their comfort and safety, hundreds on hundreds of students were willing to donate, to ferry supplies, to offer up their homes to suspended students. Administration revealed itself to be firmly in the enemy camp, sanctioning violence against protesters and going to great lengths to identify and crack down on us, especially on the organizers. As for faculty, numbers seemed split. Many faculty and employees, especially the least protected and least invested in the university (I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did, for example, without the support of a grad student professor and a nurse), threw all they had behind the protesters, risking their jobs in the process. However, notably, many tenured professors who make their livings and earn their clout off of peddling supposed theory about “intersectionality” and “the voices of the oppressed” were notably silent and not present in any way (we can only assume that Gayatri Spivak and Kimberlé  Crenshaw sleep through our chanting).

Given the catastrophic death toll from the US-Israel genocide, the spreading famine in Gaza, and the desperation of Israel to widen the war, the occupation at Columbia was a bold and necessary—although frankly overdue—step forward. Imagine if instead of a few embers from uptown Manhattan, the antibodies of resistance can overcome the complicity, complacency, and careerism on the campuses and provoke a 1968/1970 style student uprising. Imagine if campuses large and small, public and private were suddenly faced with a wave of student strikes in support of Palestine. What if, instead of taking finals, students took the quads and public spaces demanding an end to the genocide, an end to their institution’s ties with the war machine, and against the repression of student demonstrators? What if that resistance were joined: by protesters finally ditching the hi-vis vests and moving past the police barricades once and for all, shutting down (actually shutting down!) the Zionist consulates, the banks and weapons manufacturers who lubricate the war machine, the offices of both political parties? An occupation at Columbia so defiant that the administration had to deploy the NYPD wasn’t possible, until it was.

When Mark Rudd, one of the leaders of the 1968 Columbia protests was expelled, he hit the road speaking to student activists across the country and agitating at protests. Imagine if students, young people, and anyone inspired by the Columbia protests learned from 1968 and dedicated themselves to going to the people, on and off the campuses, challenging new waves of people to break with the imperial consensus and put themselves on the line to stop this genocide. Imagine especially if a few dozen or more came to Chicago this summer, organizing the people of Chicago to join the fight to stop the DNC and shut down Genocide Joe, taking their righteous conviction to stand with Palestine to Chicago’s neighborhoods and El train and pushing the protests to actually confront the war makers.

The Columbia occupation could be remembered as part of a wave of protests that demonstrated mass outrage in the face of genocide, but ultimately slowed down and capitulated. Or it could be remembered as a critical turning point, in which a small but critical and growing number of people dedicated themselves to standing with the people of the world. How it’s remembered is up to us. And you.

Spread the spirit, fan the flames of the Columbia occupation!
Long live the spirit of 1968!