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Repression

Outside Agitators: How The Power Elite Talk About Dissent

The phrases and statements used to justify police action against Columbia University students supporting Palestine are a blast from the past. The blast is not a hopeful one or one that demonstrates how far we have come as a country. Instead, it demonstrates the more things change the more they remain the same. I heard Eric Adams, Mayor of New York City, justifying police action at Columbia by citing the urgency to act because of “Outside Agitators”. These “Outside Agitators”, the rationale goes, infiltrated the student movement at Columbia and spurred them to more extreme actions. These actions would not have happened, the reasoning continues, had it not been for those “Outsiders”.

University Of California, Irvine Suspends Pro-Palestine Students

Irvine, CA – “We demand amnesty for student protesters!” said a Palestinian student organizer at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) Gaza solidarity encampment. “We’ve made it clear that we are not leaving until all of our demands are met. If anything, the student suspensions have only made us more determined to stay and hold our ground, because this fight is bigger than us. It’s a fight against genocide and our tuition money going towards the weapons that are murdering Palestinians by the Israeli government!” She was one of many voices rallying the community to defend the encampment from campus administration, who suspended numerous students, including three members of the encampment’s negotiating team on Wednesday, May 8.

University Workers Could Strike To Reject Repression Of Student Protests

From May 13 to May 15, members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4811 will be holding a strike authorization vote for a potential strike, in response to the University of California’s crackdown on peaceful pro-Palestine student protesters. On May 3, the union local filed Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) charges against the University of California (UC) system, in response to various UC campuses sending police officers to brutalize student protesters staging Gaza Solidarity Encampments. Last week, administration at the University of Los Angeles- California sent in the Los Angeles Police Department to clear out the Gaza Solidarity encampment staged by student protesters, peacefully demanding that their university divest from Israel.

Student Journalists Are Needed Now More Than Ever

On May 3, we celebrated World Press Freedom Day, an international holiday dedicated to the importance of journalism and a free press. And, as of May 3, more than 140 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7—an average of five per week. In fact, in Gaza, more journalists have been killed in the first three months of the war than in all of World War II and the Vietnam War combined. On May 5, the Israeli government raided and shut down Al Jazeera’s offices in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, in the United States—where the freedom of the press is enshrined in our Constitution’s First Amendment—law enforcement and university administrations have routinely disregarded the rights of student journalists who have been working tirelessly to cover the ongoing pro-Palestine campus protests.

The People’s Art Institute Denounces Police Attack On Student Encampment

The People’s Art Institute, constituted by SAIC students, announced our encampment situated in the AIC’s North Garden, on Saturday morning, May 4, at 11:30 A.M. The goals of the encampment were clear: to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to demand SAIC and AIC divest from entities profiting off of the occupation and genocide in Palestine. Students began setting up and by 12:05 P.M., CPD was onsite and an arrest warning was issued. CPD started kettling protestors on the sidewalk at the corner of Monroe and Michigan and removed them from the North side of the garden with extreme force.

It’s A Statement About Who The University Belongs To

Students and faculty on campuses across the country are facing repression and violent attacks from police and racist mobs for establishing ​“Popular University for Gaza” encampments that have become some of the latest sites and frontlines in the U.S. and international resistance to the genocide in Gaza. More than 2,000 students and others have reportedly been arrested since the encampments began. The students who are organizing the encampments — often with faculty support and assistance from justice groups — are generally demanding the universities disclose financial involvement with the state of Israel and then divest — or break ties — with those financial and other relationships.

Dutch Police Smash Pro-Palestine Protest Camp

Riot police bulldozed barricades and temporarily detained 125 people to break up a pro-Palestine student protest at the University of Amsterdam in the early hours of 7 May, Reuters reported. Four of the protesters are still being held on charges of public violence and insulting an officer, while the remainder have been released. Organizers said they were “taking back this campus” in solidarity with Palestine and “in the spirit” of student protests that began in the US in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Along with pro-Palestine demonstrators at universities in the US and Europe, the Dutch students are demanding the university boycott academics and businesses in Israel.

Class Nature Of Violence Against The Student Intifada

The student uprising that began at Columbia University in New York City on April 17 has evolved into a global phenomenon, reaching even Antarctica. What sparked this movement, a real Intifada that takes the form of Gaza Solidarity Encampments, is the ongoing horrific genocide in Gaza by the U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid regime that began in October. This genocide, which has played out on all forms of social media, has claimed over 35,000 lives and over 78,000 injured Palestinians as of May 5, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Israel Shuts Down Al Jazeera Operations In The Country

Two days after the world commemorated Press Freedom day, Israel ordered the Al Jazeera media network to be shut down, calling it a “threat to national security” on Sunday, May 5. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet unanimously voted to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations almost a month after the Israeli parliament had passed legislation which had given the government the right to shut down any foreign media channel in the country in the name of protecting national security. Israel had earlier accused Al Jazeera of colluding with Hamas and had also claimed it participated in the October 7 attacks.

CNN Paints Peace Protests As Hate Rallies As They Are Suppressed

As peace activists occupied common spaces on campuses across the country, some in corporate media very clearly took sides, portraying student protesters as violent, hateful and/or stupid. CNN offered some of the most striking of these characterizations.

Media Freedom Faces Unprecedented Threats Globally

Journalists and independent media outlets are facing an unprecedented decline in press freedom and a rise of state repression all across the world, according to the annual report published by Reporters without Borders (RSF) on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. RSF claims that the physical security of journalists continues to be the main threat to press freedom, noting that over 100 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel in Palestine in the last seven months of war in Gaza. RSF’s World Press Freedom Index of 2024 notes with worry that in most of the countries, political authorities supposed to protect press freedom, have emerged as the primary threat and the world has seen a “worrying decline in respect for media autonomy.”

Repression Of Campus Palestine Solidarity Reveals Nature Of The State

“As the ICJ is saying, there’s a possibility of a genocide happening. And we’re seeing our government continually sending more and more weapons, 2,000 pound bombs that are being dropped on whole neighborhoods. Schools being destroyed, hospitals being destroyed, and all our government can say is, ‘Well we’re going to ask the Israelis what happened in this situation,’ in situation, after situation, after situation. And there is no accountability for what we’re seeing with our own eyes. We’re giving him that Morehouse degree, that honorary doctorate saying you’re one of us.

Masked Israel Supporters Attack UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment

Los Angeles, CA — Over more than five hours on Tuesday night, pro-Israel Zionist agitators violently beat, pepper sprayed and threw fireworks at hundreds of college students and protesters in a “unilateral, surprise attack“ as they held UCLA’s Palestine solidarity encampment while security and police stood by idly. Though police didn’t intervene until the fifth hour of the attack, the encampment stayed intact with the students repelling the continuous onslaught as they defiantly chanted “we’re not leaving” and “Free Palestine.”

As A Free Speech Organization, We Condemn Campus Crackdowns

Defending Rights & Dissent condemns the crackdown taking place across campuses in the United States. Across the country, we have seen protests calling for a ceasefire and end to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. Increasingly, many of  these protests have taken place on America’s campuses. Since the Columbia University occupation began on April 17, protests, including encampments, have spread across college campuses as students link their opposition to Israel’s war with demands for university divestment. In spite of false claims to the contrary, the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful and nonviolent.

Why Pro-Palestinian Student Protesters Wear Masks On Campus

As demonstrations over the war in Gaza have surged on campuses, around cities and in offices across the US in recent weeks, a visible tension has emerged between the desire for public protest and a fear of professional reprisals. On the Columbia University campus, where the latest spike in protests began on 17 April, demonstrators have worn masks and used blankets to block counter-protesters from filming students. Protesters at a tent encampment at the University of Michigan handed out masks upon entry, and students there refused to give reporters their full names in case the school took punitive action against them.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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