Tuesday evening, two dozen Columbia College college students linked arms in entrance of the student-occupied Hamilton Corridor at nightfall. I used to be certainly one of them.
We sang with damaged but mighty voices, “Your individuals are my individuals, your individuals are mine; your individuals are my individuals, our struggles align.” We have been a gaggle of activists of differing faiths and none, mates and strangers united, linking arms with each other and, in spirit, with the generations of brave college students who got here earlier than us. Electrical energy crackled via the air from the rising protests echoing simply past the college gates – gates I had simply moments in the past slipped via and sprinted from like a bat out of hell.
We knew we have been more likely to be arrested for being on campus regardless of the university-mandated shelter-in-place order, however selected we to run into the fireplace anyway.
As a human chain, draped in keffiyehs and shaking like leaves within the autumn wind, we sang with hushed tones and breathed deeply as tons of of New York cops armed with flash grenades and pepper spray marched towards us like a army parade.
As they approached from a number of instructions, we sang with frail and cracking voices, “This love that I’ve, the world didn’t give it to me; the world didn’t give it, the world cannot take it away,” as officers threatened scholar journalists with arrest, presumably to make sure minimal protection of the aggression they have been about to exert.
College students in dorms craned their necks and shakily stretched their iPhones out home windows to watch the upcoming assault.
We clung tighter to 1 one other as they approached us, and seized us like rag dolls and slammed us into the hallowed floor of brick and concrete. However not like rag dolls, we bleed, we crack, we bruise, we really feel.
Police at Columbia have been something however skilled
As soon as dispersed, I held my arms as much as present I used to be neither resisting nor armed. In response, I used to be dealt with brutally by police alongside different college students being shoved down concrete steps saying with shameless condescension, “Watch your step.” We have been arrested, sure and shuttled all the way down to 1 Police Plaza, the place the New York Police Division had a pizza occasion ready for arresting officers.
They threw us in cells like animals – cells the place the one bogs girls may use lacked any privateness and the place our bare our bodies have been in plain sight to throngs of male officers.
Why are we protesting?School college students are telling you precisely how they really feel in regards to the Israel-Hamas battle. Pay attention.
Throughout information convention hours later, New York Mayor Eric Adams mentioned there have been no incidents of violence. That is an abhorrent lie. Afterward Wednesday, in an e mail despatched to the complete college neighborhood, Columbia President Minouche Shafik thanked the NYPD for his or her “professionalism.” This supposed professionalism can also be a lie.
What’s nonviolent {and professional} about seizing a compliant 120-pound scholar along with her arms up and slamming her to the concrete floor? What’s nonviolent {and professional} about brutalizing college students? What’s skilled about eradicating a lady’s hijab throughout police bookings and refusing to return it – but providing me, a non-Muslim, my vest as a result of the jail cell was chilly? What’s skilled about forcing girls to show their genitalia to male officers with a purpose to use the bathroom as a result of we “trespassed” on our personal college?
We sang “Like a tree planted by the waters, we will not be moved” as our our bodies have been seized – however we’d not be moved.
Protesters aren’t antisemitic. Our hearts are with harmless Gazans.
Our hearts are with Gaza, our resolve is stronger than ever, and we hope the world sees the brutality of the police towards peaceable protesters, on the behest of our personal college president.
However make no mistake, we’re not the heroes of this story – that honor belongs to these in Gaza; these whose households have been starved, whose cities have been bombed, whose kids have been slaughtered; and people who didn’t have the privilege of selecting arrest or providing their our bodies up as a public relations sacrifice.
Gen Z helps Palestinians:Gen Z desires no a part of Biden’s unceasing assist of Israel as civilian deaths in Gaza mount
Nor are we villains – these are the perpetrators of slaughter, similar to Minouche Shafik and the Board of Trustees who would somewhat beat and arrest college students than divest from a international authorities committing genocide.
On Saturday, I hosted a Passover Seder at my cramped Manhattan house for a lot of of my closest mates. Representing many religions and none, we broke bread collectively and celebrated the Jewish liberation from slavery and a damaged, unjust system of oppression.
On Tuesday I used to be shackled and arrested as a part of the campus motion that many within the information media are calling “antisemitic.” It isn’t.
Critically, our fellow Jewish college students should not the villains on this story. They’re our mates, our household, our blood, our fellow foot troopers. Like us, they bleed, they crack, they bruise, they really feel. At no level have the scholar organizers referred to as for or promoted violence towards our Jewish brothers and sisters. We’re calling to finish the violence and genocide towards our Palestinian brothers and sisters.
I selected to threat arrest as a result of – not like lots of my classmates and mates – I’m privileged sufficient to not face deportation; as a result of my potential suspension – and some other penalties that will befall me – doesn’t even register on the size of struggling skilled by these for whom we sing, whose lives have been taken, whose kids have been slaughtered, whose households are being starved and tortured – these whom Columbia College is complicit in killing.
We aren’t the heroes, nor are we the villains – the latter class belongs to Columbia and the damaged system it refuses to heal.
Allie Wong is a Ph.D. scholar at Columbia College. She holds a Grasp of Arts diploma in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Research from the Middlebury Institute of Worldwide Research, an M.A. in Worldwide Affairs from the Moscow State Institute of Worldwide Relations and a bachelor’s diploma in Human Rights, Peace and Nonviolent Activism from New York College.
