Updated May 3, 2024
Permalink: https://revcom.us/en/one-side-right-one-side-wrong-criminally-wrong
Across the U.S. Defiant Protests & Encampmens Against U.S.-Israeli Genocide Met With Vicious, Mass Repression, Sparking More Protest
From the Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity, May 1, 2024
One Side Is Right—
One Side Is Wrong, Criminally WRONG!
Protesting the Genocide in Gaza is RIGHT!
Assaulting, Arresting, Suspending and Expelling Brave Students and Protesters is WRONG!
We Need and We Demand A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System!!
The students, faculty and others protesting the genocide of Palestinians are RIGHT!
No one should tolerate what Israel is doing to Gaza—with the full backing of Biden and the entire ruling class of the U.S. Babies murdered and orphaned. Hospitals targeted. Whole families laid waste and buried in the rubble of their own homes. THIS IS GENOCIDE! The thousands of students, faculty and others across this country putting their bodies, their careers, and their whole selves on the line are right to do so! They have inspired the world and set a standard of moral courage.
UC Berkeley students protest in front of Sather Gate, April 22, 2024. Photo: AP
The violent attacks, arrests, suspensions, expulsions on those courageously standing up for Gaza are WRONG!
Across the country, police unleashed massive violence against righteous protesters. At Columbia University and CCNY, nearly 300 arrested. At UCLA, police stood back as Zionist thugs and fascists violently rampaged the peaceful pro-Palestinian encampment. Then, the authorities used this violence to carry out further repression. Now, the fascists in Congress are dragging even more college administrators into their witch-hunt hearings, fueling an intensifying crackdown, really a Nazification of the American universities.
All this repression is ILLEGITIMATE. Not only is it aimed at those standing up for justice—it is in gross violation of the much vaunted claims of this country as a bastion of “freedom and democracy,” “free speech” and “academic freedom.”
What is being revealed through the U.S.’s continued backing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and through this massive illegitimate force and repression against righteous protesters is the actual nature of the system we live under: A DICTATORSHIP OF CAPITALISM-IMPERIALISM. For more on this—and why a revolution that overthrows this system is both needed & possible—see below.
Right now, three things must happen:
[1] The resistance to the genocide in Gaza must spread—on the campuses and throughout all of society!
[2] Defend ALL anti-genocide students & protesters! Do NOT let them divide & demonize a movement with right on our side!
[3] Everyone who seriously agonizes about the future and wants to see a world without the unjust brutality we are witnessing in Gaza, and in this illegitimate repression, needs to dig in seriously to the source of all this: the system of capitalism-imperialism. And dig into the solution to it: a real revolution. The Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity invites and urges you to do this by reading below in this flyer and coming to rallies, marches and celebrations of revolutionary internationalist May Day this weekend across this country (details below). Find out about the strategy, vision, plan and leadership for this revolution. Bring the spirit of defiance and your desire to get to a world where these kinds of crimes never happen again to anyone! With this whole system in crisis and society being ripped apart, the revolution that’s needed to overthrow this system could happen not just in some far off place and time, but right here and right in this time we are living in.
Why is this happening? And what must be done?
In regard to why, the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, BA, has said that:
fundamental interests of U.S. capitalism-imperialism are at stake. Because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.
And this repression is happening because representatives of the ruling class in this country have a definite sense that if youth especially at “elite” universities begin to seriously question and act against what this system is doing—if the system “loses the allegiance” of large numbers of those students—that can be a big factor in creating a real crisis for the system as a whole, as happened in the 1960s: a crisis that, now more than ever, this system really cannot afford, when the whole country is already being torn apart by deep divisions, with bitter clashes right among the ruling powers. So, at the same time as they are bitterly divided, the ruling powers of this country are firmly united in their determination to punish and intimidate especially students at elite universities who have stepped forward to protest the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians. The ruling class is desperate to prevent opposition to its fundamental interests from spreading and involving masses of people, from all parts of society…
What must be done? Again, from Bob Avakian:
The fact that sixty years [after the 1960’s] there is once again a need for this kind of massive opposition to the vicious repression of people protesting profound injustice and horrific, genocidal atrocity—this highlights sharply the fact that there is the even more fundamental need for a revolution to finally abolish this whole system of capitalism-imperialism, its actual repressive dictatorship over people in this country, and its massive war crimes and crimes against humanity all over the globe!
Listen to the full dispatch (#27) from Bob Avakian quoted above, and hear more truths the powers-that-be don’t want you to know about REAL REVOLUTION, IN THIS TIME, follow @BobAvakianOfficial on all social media platforms.
Across the U.S., Defiant Protests & Encampments Against U.S.-Israeli Genocide Met With Vicious, Mass Repression, Sparking More Protest
Defiant protests have continued to mushroom around the U.S. and even internationally, with students and other supporters of the Palestinian people braving police attacks and arrests, suspensions and expulsions, and physical attacks by pro-Zionist thugs.
Columbia & CCNY—New York City: On Tuesday night, April 30, Mayor Eric Adams, (aka “the Black Giuliani”), the NYPD, and campus administrators launched a massive police assault on pro-Palestine encampments at Columbia University and the City College of New York (CCNY), arresting 119 at Columbia and 173 at CCNY.
The Columbia administration had warned students they had to abandon their non-violent encampment, and President Shafik “invited” the NYPD back onto campus (after claiming she wouldn’t) and has since called on them to “have a presence” (i.e. occupy) the campus till May 17. The students stood firm and early Tuesday morning one group seized and occupied Hamilton Hall.
That evening, Mayor Adam gave a vicious, threatening press conference at which he claimed professional “outside agitators” had hijacked the protest movement, that the Hamilton Hall takeover presented a big danger, that “antisemitism and anti-Israel attitudes were pervasive” and that he was determined to prevent the “radicalization” of the youth. Hours later hundreds of pigs in full riot gear descended on the Columbia campus, forcibly preventing any of the campus journalists from witnessing what was going down.
They then tore down and removed the encampment, and broke into Hamilton Hall and arrested everyone there, as hundreds of students and supporters stood just outside campus shouting support for the protesters. There is video of some students being knocked down the stairs and one left temporarily unconscious, and that other high tech weapons may have been deployed.
Meanwhile, at CCNY which is uptown from Columbia, riot police raided and broke up the Gaza solidarity encampment there, arresting scores of students and community members. Later, the NYPD shared a video on social media of police taking a Palestinian flag down from the CCNY flagpole, throwing it on the ground, and then raising the American flag.
This evening (May 1, 10pm Eastern) there are reports of thousands of people marching through the streets of New York in support of the students and in opposition to the police assaults.
UCLA, Los Angeles: On Tuesday, April 30, the UCLA administration declared the campus Palestinian Solidarity Encampment illegal, warning students they could be suspended or expelled. The students, faculty and community members who make up the encampment called the declaration cowardly and refused to disband. Around 11pm that night, this non-violent encampment was violently attacked by some 200 Zionists and fascist thugs. As police and university officials stood back and did nothing for two hours, these goons attacked the encampment with sticks, bear spray, smoke bombs, fireworks, even wooden pallets, trying to destroy it. Members of the encampment and their supporters fought back bravely and the camp is still standing.
As of this writing no one from the violent pro-Israel mob has been charged— in stark contrast to the harsh repression being meted out to righteous anti-genocide protesters across the country. Students issued a statement condemning the University’s hypocritical “pretense” of caring about student safety, and declaring that they—“The twice besieged and never defeated Palestine Solidarity Encampment”—were not backing down.
The students also held an important press conference today (May 1) presenting powerful firsthand testimony about last night’s attack, including exposing cooperation between the police and the Zionists and fascists. They also spoke powerfully as to why it’s crucial for people to support the struggle against genocide. By 5:00 pm there were a thousand students and people from the community gathered around and a steady stream coming into the encampment. Read this powerful statement from the Palestine Solidarity Encampment.
Many other campuses have been scenes of very intense struggle, including the following:
University of Wisconsin—Madison: May 1, university and city cops attacked and cleared a campus encampment, destroying people’s belongings and the tents that had been set up two days before. Thirty-four people were arrested, including at least two professors; a Palestinian professor was pinned to the ground by cops and had a gash on his head from being hit by a police shield. A student protester said, “All of this is to show that our chancellor, our administration would rather attack the UW-Madison community directly, then listen to our demands to ask that they simply end their complicity in an ongoing genocide.” Cops and administrators claimed that the attack had nothing to do with suppressing protest, it’s just that the university “does not allow camping or camping equipment on university property.”
Within two hours, protesters had established a new encampment with over a dozen tents.
