Protests and police on campus

[marshwiggle]

IHE: UC Berkeley Investigates Pro-Palestinian Dinner Protest Fracas

The Council on American-Islamic Relations shared on X a video showing Fisk coming up behind Afaneh, grabbing the phone in her hand from which she was reading the speech, putting her arm around Afaneh's shoulder and saying, "Leave, this is not your house, it is my house." Chemerinksy also says "Please leave our house." Fisk then tries to pull Afaneh's microphone out of her hands. Afaneh says UC is funding weapons manufacturers and Fisk, relinquishing the mic, says "I have nothing to do with what the UC does."

So you can invade my house but I'm the one being dragged up to see what transgressions I have committed?

In a state with stand your ground laws, the response could well have involved a load of buckshot with the invader on the receiving end.  But in Berkley??????  It seems not.

Truly we are living in cloud cuckoo land.

The charges of "Islamophobia" are simply hysterical.

The professor should have simply called the police, but I guess anger took over.

Well, it was a private party.

Chemerinksy, a free speech scholar, has written that the presidents of the third-year law school class had asked him and Fisk to have graduating law students over for dinner last month.

The monumental ingratitude of insulting your hosts is shocking.

A person with any class and integrity would simply and politely decline the invitation.

[Langue_doc]

IHE: UC Berkeley Investigates Pro-Palestinian Dinner Protest Fracas

The Council on American-Islamic Relations shared on X a video showing Fisk coming up behind Afaneh, grabbing the phone in her hand from which she was reading the speech, putting her arm around Afaneh's shoulder and saying, "Leave, this is not your house, it is my house." Chemerinksy also says "Please leave our house." Fisk then tries to pull Afaneh's microphone out of her hands. Afaneh says UC is funding weapons manufacturers and Fisk, relinquishing the mic, says "I have nothing to do with what the UC does."

So you can invade my house but I'm the one being dragged up to see what transgressions I have committed?

In a state with stand your ground laws, the response could well have involved a load of buckshot with the invader on the receiving end.  But in Berkley??????  It seems not.

Truly we are living in cloud cuckoo land.

The charges of "Islamophobia" are simply hysterical.

The professor should have simply called the police, but I guess anger took over.

The student in question went to a private residence armed with a microphone and a speech so that she could disrupt the dinner, instead of declining the invitation. Hijacking a dinner in a private residence was disruptive to the hosts as well as the guests. Accusing the hosts of Islamophobia when the group supporting Malak Afaneh distributed a poster depicting a "caricature of [Chemrinsky] holding a bloody knife and fork and the words "No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves" is blatantly anti-Semetic. According to one of the reports

In his own statement released the morning after the incident, Chemerinsky said he was "enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda."

But he said he and Fisk would not be intimidated and still planned to host the additional scheduled student dinners at their home, albeit with security measures in place. (An attendee of Wednesday's dinner said the event transpired without incident.)

Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, said a poster that Afaneh's group distributed before the event, with a caricature of him holding a bloody knife and fork and the words "No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves," was blatantly antisemitic.

[Langue_doc]

Apologies for the double posting.

According to The Gothamist,

The students who orchestrated last week's takeover of Columbia University's Hamilton Hall left behind a series of charts, maps and supply lists that detail the extensive planning behind the brief occupation.

Photos shared exclusively with Gothamist reveal the protesters' hand-drawn schematics mapping out entire floors of the building, locations of supplies, doors they wanted to barricade, and the locations of water fountains and fire extinguishers.

A "task list" included to-dos like "set up pulley," "lock all windows," "security shifts," and "role [sic] call." A hand-drawn map of the building's third floor indicated that room 313 had been designated the "smoking room." Another list was titled "Heavy Equipment Locations" and noted rooms with "tons of books," "large tables," "tall ladder" and "portable podium/table." In all caps, the list also included the following note: "3rd floor windows in need of blockade."

See the article for photos of two lists by the protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall, the first a hand-drawn map of stairways and entrances to the building and the second, a list of "heavy supplies" like tables and books, along with room locations.

[apl68]

Hope Room 313 wasn't some poor faculty or staff member's office....

[jimbogumbo]

In support of an opinion upthread from Wahoo: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/protest-effectiveness-research/678292/

[secundem_artem]

Somebody somewhere is making a mint selling keffiyehs to  white college kids who didn't even know what those things were 6 weeks ago.

[dismalist]

Somebody somewhere is making a mint selling keffiyehs to  white college kids who didn't even know what those things were 6 weeks ago.

Brando in "The Wild One" [1953]:

"Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?"
"Whaddya got?"

[Langue_doc]

Somebody somewhere is making a mint selling keffiyehs to  white college kids who didn't even know what those things were 6 weeks ago.

Try Amazon where keffiyeh scarves, made in China, sell for under $10. Type "keffiyeh scarf Vivian and Vincent" in the Amazon search bar for details regarding price and place of origin.

[Wahoo Redux]

In support of an opinion upthread from Wahoo: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/protest-effectiveness-research/678292/

Today's students are relying on the zeitgeist of their grandparents.  Volatile protests, protest signs, marches, slogans, chants, camp-outs, occupations----all 1970s.

Then there is the rightwing media distorting in typical fashion.  My father-in-law had FOX News on his TV today, and considerable coverage was dedicated to "the anti-Israel protests" of college students with cherrypicked footage of students resisting arrest and, of course, a professor complaining about police brutality. 

[Wahoo Redux]

CNN: Dozens of professors among those arrested in campus protests

[marshwiggle]

CNN: Dozens of professors among those arrested in campus protests

If profs could have been restricted to only "supporting" student protesters on the "other" side; i.e. ones who they didn't agree with politically, (so it was just about the principle of free speech), I'd wager you could count them on one hand. With fingers to spare.

[Wahoo Redux]

And, of all people, Jerry Seinfeld involved: NBC: Duke students walk out of Jerry Seinfeld's commencement speech amid wave of graduation anti-war protests

[Parasaurolophus]

Context from the Guardian:

An analysis of 553 US campus demonstrations nationwide between 18 April and 3 May found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

Over the same period, Acled documented at least 70 instances of forceful police intervention against US campus protests, which includes the arrest of demonstrators and the use of physical dispersal tactics, including the deployment of chemical agents, batons and other kinds of physical force.

[dismalist]

Context from the Guardian:

An analysis of 553 US campus demonstrations nationwide between 18 April and 3 May found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

Over the same period, Acled documented at least 70 instances of forceful police intervention against US campus protests, which includes the arrest of demonstrators and the use of physical dispersal tactics, including the deployment of chemical agents, batons and other kinds of physical force.

The whole point of a demo is to get arrested! Preferably in front of TV cameras. Better yet, provoke the police to use their sticks on people, cuff them, and throw them on the pavement. Gas is OK on account the filming doesn't move too many, so don't protest it too much.

In that sense, I guess the demos have been successful.

In another sense, I have no clue where these numbers come from, the number arrested aside. You can get a demo in New York City at any time, for any cause, but all these events seem populated by protesting tourists.

[marshwiggle]

Context from the Guardian:

An analysis of 553 US campus demonstrations nationwide between 18 April and 3 May found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

Over the same period, Acled documented at least 70 instances of forceful police intervention against US campus protests, which includes the arrest of demonstrators and the use of physical dispersal tactics, including the deployment of chemical agents, batons and other kinds of physical force.

So the lack of "serious interpersonal violence or property damage" potentially still allows blocking people from services and spaces, among other things. It also potentially allows all kinds of nasty name-calling and verbal harassment.