… Columbia University administrators called in the New York Police Department (NYPD) on Wednesday evening to violently suppress and shut down a pro-Palestinian student occupation of the campus’ Butler Library. Approximately 78 protesters were arrested just over a year after the police-state crackdown at Columbia last April, when the NYPD swarmed the campus to arrest over 100 students and break up the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
On Wednesday afternoon, a group of around 100 anti-genocide student protesters took over Butler’s main reading room and renamed it the “Basel Al-Araj Popular University,” after the Palestinian activist and writer killed by Israeli forces in 2017.
The students’ demands include Columbia’s financial divestment from Zionist organizations, an academic boycott of complicit institutions, cops and ICE off campus and amnesty for all university members unfairly targeted and disciplined for pro-Palestinian actions.
Columbia’s Public Safety officers immediately responded and violently barred protesters from leaving unless they showed identification, which created a prolonged standoff…
lmao did you even read what I wrote about conflating private property damage and violence?
I did. What these people did wasn’t just property damage being treated like violence - there was actual physical violence when they were being held, in the place that they were taking over mind you, until the police could get there. Then more violence when the police got there.
You are, to put it mildly, full of shit. The only violence was the police beating and hurting protesters.
Please try to be more honest going forward.
You know it’s all on video, don’t you? You know you’re the one that’s full of shit, don’t you?
The protesters were trying to force their way out of the building they were occupying. They got violent when they weren’t being allowed to leave.
Please try to be more honest going forward.
lmao trying to pretend that trying to leave a building you’ve been locked in by force, by cops, is protester violence.
They were told to leave or else they would be trespassing, yet they were prevented from leaving. If you are unlawfully being detained then reasonable force is appropriate to try and leave.