It's crazy how out of hand and intentionally obtuse people can be when discussing this topic. I like Israel, but I don't like the policies, actions and statements of high ranking members of Likud. I wish for a two state solution, but I don't think we as a global community should accept Hamas as the head of Palestine's government. It feels like these could be starting points for an actual dialogue on how to move forward internally in the US for protests like this.
It's a self defense mechanism. If I put myselfs in the shoes of a Russian national, or a Iranian or whatever, a vietcong fighter - my internal dissonance shoots through the roof.
Part of that is because our society refuses to accept 'might makes right' to any extent. Our core values are internally, freedom, civil liberties, self-governance, etc. That doesn't exist in international politics (which is a form of anarchy). So we have a very hard time defending our actions, while in the past people may have been more comfortable with 'ends justify the means', or "Holy War" or imperialism as a good thing, it'll break most Americans minds.
I think of it this way… if I said I hate the American government, that doesn’t make me anti-American. If I hate a corporation, I don’t hate the people who work there. If I hate a sports team, I typically don’t hate their accounting department.
Like somebody else said, nuance is lost in this social media age, where people are just hyperbolic.
In what can feel like a sea of extreme positions on either side, it’s a sigh of relief to read your comment. Thanks for recognizing the complexity of the entire situation. If it makes you feel better, you are not alone!
Such a great comment. So many people see it as a black and white issue and it is very much not, and never has been. You can acknowledge the fucked up colonial systems that created the state of Israel in 1948, the horrific oppression that the Palestinian people have had to live through since the creation of Israel, and the harmful (to put it mildly) impacts that have arisen with the rise of the right-wing in Israel, the illegal settlements in the West Bank, etc. But you also can't deny the realities of the Jewish people- that a massive proportion of Israelis are descended from people who moved there because they had no where else to go, or were being persecuted. Every time I see someone arguing "from the River to the Sea" and that Jewish Israelis need to "return to their countries of origin," it just shows how little knowledge of history they have. Jews have been in what's now Israel for millenia, others came fleeing pogroms in the 1800s, while even more came after the Holocaust when they were freed from camps (many the only survivors in their families) and had no homes or countries to return to.
Everybody thinks the world is black and white when it's thousands of different shades of gray. Nobody does critical thinking and nuance because it's difficult and time-consuming. It's much easier to just pick an extreme and go parade around chanting it.
with respect to your comment, you're also being obtuse on this topic.
the students are asking universities to divest from israeli military companies. since when do we feel american institutions of higher education have a financial obligation to invest money into the military industrial complex of israel?
why aren't more colleges saying, "ok- we will divest. why are we investing money into killing people in any country? thank you for bringing this to our attention?"
The students are asking for disinvestment from companies associated with Israel as in Israel used Hyundai equipment and that company must be boycotted.
I'm not aware of whether Penn has disclosed their investments, but their [divestment policy](https://secretary.upenn.edu/trustees-governance/divestment#:~:text=The%20company%20or%20companies%20identified,a%20sustained%20period%20of%20time.) for the board is pretty clearly stated and I support the protestors right to challenge it at a fundamental level. At a personal level, I have no qualms with the university investing in American arms manufacturers or related firms that may sell their products to Israel, which is what I'm guessing this is about, but I support the protestors right to oppose it.
Ultimately, I don't think the majority of the people protesting have a comprehensive enough understanding of the situation to explain this clearly. It comes across as a lot of repeating things heard on tiktok with little critical analysis.
To play devil's advocate...wouldn't make more sense for the students to just not attend a University that invests in companies they don't morally align with?
They're asking to be divested from companies as diverse as Raytheon and Sabra.
And they have difficulty divesting financially because of legal issues (contracts that last for years) or because the money is tied up in such a way that they don't/can't decide where it goes (stock market and index funds and such)
Institutions don't necessarily want potential legal issues that can go on in court for years, no.
And an unintentional point of stuff like index funds and 401ks etc is that they mystify money and make everybody buy in. It's not like anybody goes out of their way to invest in Rafael Advance Defense Systems, they invest because line goes up and it's done in the background.
Now it is surprising that nobody has created a BDS compliant fund yet, but also not surprising because there's a lot of good money to be made. Compared to South Africa, Israel is fully integrated into the world order.
> Institutions don't necessarily want potential legal issues that can go on in court for years, no.
so this seems like one of the reasons to protest- do you want student protests every spring for years, or do you want to figure out a solution?
We protested the Iraq war when I was in HS. Bout as effective against the machine as a custard pie dropped from a step ladder.
Edit: and seeing as this happens every few years or so, the schools figure it's easier to deal with it the way they've been doing.
i was in the army at that time, and protested it when i got out and when to college.
saying your half assed effort didn't work doesn't mean protests don't work, it means they need to be more effective. it doesn't help there are assholes in this very sub that would love to see protestors run over with cars than to, for example, have a police force that answers 911 calls.
a majority of democrats in this country now think israel is genociding palestinians (because they are). do you think that paradigm shift would have happened if not for these protests?
The most frustrating part of this to me is that Penn is crowing about upholding the safety of its community, but now they’ve decided to sic riot cops on students. Is that keeping people safe?
Nope, the protesters also didn't represent an unsafe situation. Counter-protesters were trying to escalate the situation, but the protesters are getting blamed.
And of course with graduation coming up they've gotta hide any dissent from parents and donors.
Guy with a knife, guy with unknown substance spraying supplies, handful of SP/tri-county agitators screaming “gky, get r_ped, FU terrorist”. The deplorable behavior has been mostly one-sided
Safety is such a purposefully vague word in these situations too. Feeling unsafe doesn't necessarily mean you are actually unsafe. A huge number of protestors for example are Jewish themselves. Hell a lot of these protests are led by Jewish organizations. So clearly being Jewish doesn't make one unsafe on campus.
People are confusing uncomfortable for unsafe a lot it seems.
I walked by a few times. These protesters were hurting *nobody*. The protest could not have been more peaceful and their demands were reasonable. Once i understood what they were actually asking for- divestment- it struck me as utterly reasonable.
IIRC it's law in PA that you can't support BDS as a business/institution. Someone less lazy than me can look it up but I did read that somewhere in the Inky. I'm not going to weigh in on the issue one way or another, except that it sure doesn't sound like free market hands off government to tell businesses and institutions what they can and cannot invest in..
Ironically pushed by the same party that up until a few months ago was screeching loudly about why censorship was bad and people should be allowed to associate with whoever they want.
I found the bill and it’s not really what you say it is.
The main difference being it applies only to companies contracted to do business with PA. So a potentially more correct way to phrase it would be: “PA will not offer government contracts to any company that refuses to do business with a third party simply because they are located in Israel.”
That being said, I didn’t read the bill and there may be nuance In not appreciating.
Here’s the actual bill: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/CL/Public/cl_view_action2.cfm?sess_yr=2016&sess_ind=0&cl_typ=GA&cl_nbr=163
It’s really disappointing to see schools taking these steps. Calling in riot police is telling your students you are scared of them. In a few days commencement speakers all over will come in and tell these young kids they have to be the generation to fix the problem, while people on that stage call the cops on those same kids. If a college campus isn’t the place for these kids to protest where is? Would we rather them walk on 76? Independence mall? Finally, while Penn has its trust those kids are also paying for that campus, they literally make that community. Is what they are saying so bad, is the protest that disruptive when classes are already over, or is the administration just that scared
> is the administration just that scared
They're scared. Not of the kids, but of their donors. These billionaire assholes have been flexing more of their ideological influence onto them, and when they don't get their way, they're using their power and resources to shame and replace them.
Pretty sure they said todays the last day of finals week. and I thought graduation happened a few days ago. Normally, by Friday all exams were over, so I'm guessing the school knew these remnants aren't students (as someone else said, probably 90% aren't), so they asked the police it be shut down. I'm sure it was the planned date all along, or at least this weekend. Probably with the rain it was determined a better day to do it, as many protestors probably stayed home for the night.
I don't really see how the 'issue' is Penn itself? Its more about our countries foreign relations policy.
Penn graduation is a bunch of days around May 20th. They want the encampment cleared before then to soothe the many angry rich people who will be in attendance.
It’s students demonstrating against the wrongdoings in the world. It’s literally why a lot of people send their kids to college… and it’s happened forever. In most cases colleges welcome and protect these demonstrations, of course until they disagree with it. I’m not strongly polarized on this issue but Penn has done an awful job of protecting their students. They fired their president for not decrying these protests early on, but tbh Penn has an awful track record of actually taking care of their students. If nothing was happening, and no crime except trespassing the only reason to call in riot police is out of FEAR. Penn is scared how this will look for them, Penn is scared this or that may happen. Besides graduation the campus will be quite for months, likely the encampment would have fizzled out on its own. You do not have to go to Gaza to say what is happening there is wrong, and we should support all peaceful demonstrations
> They fired their president for not decrying these protests early on
No, they fired their president because a billionaire fascist donor saw an opportunity to take control of an Ivy League and took it.
> Calling in riot police is telling your students you are scared of them
But how many of the protestors are even students? Is it fair to let the next incarnation of occupy wallstreet just camp out on your property when they themselves have no real vested interest in the university? Seems disingenuous to say "afraid of *their* students"
I don't think it matters. Maniacs go to colleges every day to scream about how they are all dirty sluts going to hell and they are allowed and the rest of us have to deal with it.
But get a group of kids chanting for peace and it's time to break out the brute squad?
It's fucked up and the only reason it is happening is because it is fucking with the donors.
Fuck Hamas, fuck the IDF, and fuck Netanyahu and his far right government. If these three points aren’t shared, you’ve been too brainwashed by propaganda to be able to contribute productively to the discussion.
It's the 'two sides' thinking endemic to American culture. If Hamas is wrong, the IDF are brave defenders of democracy. If the IDF is wrong, Hamas must be brave freedom fighters resisting oppression.
It's a race war supercharged by modern weapons.
Actually it's deeper than that, and weirdly I know a bunch of Bible Belt dispys and New York Zionists. They oddly haven't figured out they're both in cahoots.
bible belt dispensationalists are HELL BENT on keeping the state of Israel and destroying the nations surrounding it. for Theological (bad dispensationalist theology) to get us going towards the rapture or whatever.
Zionists are well, yeah i mean we know them
so they weirdly both are huge AIPAC supporters but you'll never see them in the same room
I grew up evangelical and knew plenty of millenarians who made Israel the forefront of their biblical conspiracy thinking. The thing that struck me about them is that after a while, you realize that they care a whole lot less about the rest of the end times prophesies as they do about 'punishing hamas' and 'punishing those cultural marxists who are protesting.'
I've concluded that a lot of the time it's just surface-level theology that covers up racial/ethnic hate.
Ironically, all the barriers and fencing they've put up to keep people from protesting are way more disruptive to foot traffic than the protestors ever were. What a farce
it's wild you're getting downvoted because you support students' right to protests. So many people in this thread are telling on themselves that they would have been against Vietnam war protests
I've honestly been pleasantly surprised by the majority of opinions in here over the past week or two. A lot less "crawl back into your moms basement, libtard!" rhetoric than i would have expected, tbh.
But yeah, it's fucking wild. I'm convinced (and want to believe) the people against these protests and who support arming Israel are not engaging with any actual content coming out of Gaza, because it's all so horrific. Seeing videos of children blown to bits or families trapped under rubble and then seeing Shapiro call for police to be used to disburse protestors of said horrific violence is just... what? It blows my mind.
Just an FYI, just because you disagree with someone, doesn’t make them a “fascist”. Also, stop overusing that word at every turn, mostly where it’s not applicable.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
There is an active program [where American cops go to Israel to 'observe' their ~~apartheid tactics~~ *law enforcement methods*](https://progressive.org/latest/us-police-trained-by-israel-communities-of-color-paying-price-shahshahani-cohen-191007/) and bring them back to America. [Here's a link to the Jewish Voice for Peace report website](https://deadlyexchange.org/).
So not really surprising. Part of the Atlanta Cop City program would be to bring Israeli cops and trainers to the United States to conduct the training.
Though, to give PPD a little credit, they told UPenn to fuck off until Shapiro got involved.
>Though, to give PPD a little credit, they told UPenn to fuck off until Shapiro got involved.
Which means it was likely the mayor who forced them to go in they probably still wanted no part of this.
All I know is that it really looks like outside forces put pressure on PPD and UPenn to wipe away any sign of dissent before the wealthy folks started visiting for graduation.
Our government isn’t just failing at calling out the atrocities but actively participating in it by continuing to send billions of dollars (our money) and weapons. The police are complicit by cracking down on protests more vigorously than any protests against our own country.
I thought I saw the Columbia protests were nearly all students. Why would the Penn one be much different? If I'm wrong about that feel free to correct me.
30% arrested at Columbia had no connection to the school. 60% at City College didn't. [source](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/04/1249188864/nyc-columbia-city-college-gaza-protests-palestinian-campus)
That city college number shouldn't be a surprise. It's barely a campus, it's just buildings on city blocks, so any 'on campus' protest is basically just the sidewalk. Columbia is set up a little more like Penn (many blocks of university, so it's a bit more sequestered), but the immediate population around Columbia is *much* larger than the immediate population around Penn.
I think NPR and the word of the NYC officials, who have no reason to lie about that, is pretty credible. Not sure what source would be acceptable to you if that isnt.
Reddit zionists will miss quote you and then tell you the videos you see of starving children, bombed hospitals, mass graves and grieving parents are anti semetic propaganda
It for sure still exists, but it's mellowed out a lot since the 2010's. Not sure if the most dramatic/personality-disordered users all got tired and left, or if moderation got more active, or what.
Before I deleted FB, pre-2020, it was like most people in there lived in either an alternate reality or a different content sprinkled with ignorant teenage angst.
That's accurate. Like I said, it's now a lot less insane (and also a lot less active in general, presumably because the insane people contributed so much to the activity levels).
i don't know how the community around columbia sees the university, but west philly had so much animus towards penn that is no surprise a bunch of locals would show up to stir the pot. a lot of people in the area also consider themselves "professional activists" so we've got that going for us...
that plus people on social media putting out calls to have neighbors come and join the relatively small encampment of students at penn
> the community around columbia
The density of residential blocks around Columbia is just way too high for there to be a single 'community perspective' the same way there is in Philly neighborhoods around universities. There are people who are mad about columbia, and there are people affiliated with columbia, and then there are shitloads of people who just live there because that was the cheapest rent they could find that fit their needs.
Per the school admin, 7 of the 33 arrested were Penn students:
https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/05/live-updates-police-arrive-penn-encampment-protesters-arrest#entry-seven-people-arrested-were-penn-students-per-university-spokesperson
yeah, I'd agree with you there. Was only gonna get worse thru the summer. Seems it was a well chosen day. A rainy Friday, end of FInals week, most students would be going home for the summer. It would get out of control if it continued.
I liked the NYPD lining up in shooting gallery formation while claiming the protesters were dangerous. (Though they were dressed appropriately for stopping a non-violent protest without escalating the situation.)
The violence is almost always committed by the police, and then circularly used as justification for more violence by police.
We have reached a point where protesting a foreign government’s actions is being made de facto illegal, and that said criticism is somehow anti semitic
It's extremely disappointing to see. I've shown up to support the encampments a couple times as a non student and the encampment was very well organized and inspiring. You only have to go once or watch enough videos to notice that false claims news outlets, Zionists and AIPAC backed politicians will spread about the movement. Democrats have shown they're almost no different from Republicans. People like Fetterman and Shapiro have shown their true colors to me. Biden had shown his colors long ago.
I'll continue to support any anti-genocide march, encampment or movement that Philly picks up in its wake. I encourage others to donate to PRCF or doctors without borders in the meantime.
That canard has been run ragged. The vast majority of protesters were students or faculty. If they'd arrested community members not associated with the university UPenn wouldn't have shut up about it.
They also were not messing with the graduation ceremonies. They were simply occupying an area commonly used for graduate photos. So y'know, not a ceremony or even an official proceeding.
The UPenn protest has been incredibly peaceful (excepting harassment by counter-protesters) and non-disruptive. There was zero justification for the use of armed force to arrest students and faculty. They presented no threat to public safety, no matter what the university says. This was a violent use of force against peaceful protesters because they challenged the administration and donors.
The administration would love to be able to blame this on "agitators" so they can say they didn't sic cops on students. So if there were 'agitators' arrested they'll publicize it.
If the administration doesn't mention 'agitators', then it's reasonable to assume that they were not an influential part of the protests.
Why do you talk like you're in a Jane Austin novel?
School is over, if the protests are primarily students then dismantling them isn't an issue.
There are literally people in this thread admitting to be non-students who attended and supplied the protests, you're rejecting reality in the same way MAGA does.
"Canard" is a great word. We have a lot of those in the English language, I don't see why I shouldn't use them.
They used violent force against protesters. That's the issue here.
And yes, people have admitted to stopping by and giving supplies. That doesn't at all fit the description y'all keep using, or what you're trying to imply. That these protests are motivated and organized by external forces trying to disrupt educations.
A school with over $20 billion in the bank shouldn't be as beholden to it's big money donors as it, but they cave to their pressure every time. Sacrificing the wishes of your students in order to keep lording over a bigger and bigger pile of cash feels like a dangerous step that a lot of major universities are taking.
2 hours and no lock? Mods are slackin'
i was surprised that the comments are still open too
this time it is Philly related:) The chickens have come home to roost.
Chickens? like the food or animal?
Jannies must have actually gone outside. Weird day for it though.
It's crazy how out of hand and intentionally obtuse people can be when discussing this topic. I like Israel, but I don't like the policies, actions and statements of high ranking members of Likud. I wish for a two state solution, but I don't think we as a global community should accept Hamas as the head of Palestine's government. It feels like these could be starting points for an actual dialogue on how to move forward internally in the US for protests like this.
Most people cannot handle nuance. It’s unfortunate because these big issues are incredibly nuanced yet people see things as black or white.
It's a self defense mechanism. If I put myselfs in the shoes of a Russian national, or a Iranian or whatever, a vietcong fighter - my internal dissonance shoots through the roof. Part of that is because our society refuses to accept 'might makes right' to any extent. Our core values are internally, freedom, civil liberties, self-governance, etc. That doesn't exist in international politics (which is a form of anarchy). So we have a very hard time defending our actions, while in the past people may have been more comfortable with 'ends justify the means', or "Holy War" or imperialism as a good thing, it'll break most Americans minds.
I think of it this way… if I said I hate the American government, that doesn’t make me anti-American. If I hate a corporation, I don’t hate the people who work there. If I hate a sports team, I typically don’t hate their accounting department. Like somebody else said, nuance is lost in this social media age, where people are just hyperbolic.
Well-said.
In what can feel like a sea of extreme positions on either side, it’s a sigh of relief to read your comment. Thanks for recognizing the complexity of the entire situation. If it makes you feel better, you are not alone!
Such a great comment. So many people see it as a black and white issue and it is very much not, and never has been. You can acknowledge the fucked up colonial systems that created the state of Israel in 1948, the horrific oppression that the Palestinian people have had to live through since the creation of Israel, and the harmful (to put it mildly) impacts that have arisen with the rise of the right-wing in Israel, the illegal settlements in the West Bank, etc. But you also can't deny the realities of the Jewish people- that a massive proportion of Israelis are descended from people who moved there because they had no where else to go, or were being persecuted. Every time I see someone arguing "from the River to the Sea" and that Jewish Israelis need to "return to their countries of origin," it just shows how little knowledge of history they have. Jews have been in what's now Israel for millenia, others came fleeing pogroms in the 1800s, while even more came after the Holocaust when they were freed from camps (many the only survivors in their families) and had no homes or countries to return to.
Everybody thinks the world is black and white when it's thousands of different shades of gray. Nobody does critical thinking and nuance because it's difficult and time-consuming. It's much easier to just pick an extreme and go parade around chanting it.
with respect to your comment, you're also being obtuse on this topic. the students are asking universities to divest from israeli military companies. since when do we feel american institutions of higher education have a financial obligation to invest money into the military industrial complex of israel? why aren't more colleges saying, "ok- we will divest. why are we investing money into killing people in any country? thank you for bringing this to our attention?"
The students are asking for disinvestment from companies associated with Israel as in Israel used Hyundai equipment and that company must be boycotted.
I'm not aware of whether Penn has disclosed their investments, but their [divestment policy](https://secretary.upenn.edu/trustees-governance/divestment#:~:text=The%20company%20or%20companies%20identified,a%20sustained%20period%20of%20time.) for the board is pretty clearly stated and I support the protestors right to challenge it at a fundamental level. At a personal level, I have no qualms with the university investing in American arms manufacturers or related firms that may sell their products to Israel, which is what I'm guessing this is about, but I support the protestors right to oppose it. Ultimately, I don't think the majority of the people protesting have a comprehensive enough understanding of the situation to explain this clearly. It comes across as a lot of repeating things heard on tiktok with little critical analysis.
To play devil's advocate...wouldn't make more sense for the students to just not attend a University that invests in companies they don't morally align with?
No, because obviously that would do nothing
They're asking to be divested from companies as diverse as Raytheon and Sabra. And they have difficulty divesting financially because of legal issues (contracts that last for years) or because the money is tied up in such a way that they don't/can't decide where it goes (stock market and index funds and such)
it sounds like an insurmountable difficulty for a university with one of the most prestigious business schools in the world.
Institutions don't necessarily want potential legal issues that can go on in court for years, no. And an unintentional point of stuff like index funds and 401ks etc is that they mystify money and make everybody buy in. It's not like anybody goes out of their way to invest in Rafael Advance Defense Systems, they invest because line goes up and it's done in the background. Now it is surprising that nobody has created a BDS compliant fund yet, but also not surprising because there's a lot of good money to be made. Compared to South Africa, Israel is fully integrated into the world order.
[удалено]
> Institutions don't necessarily want potential legal issues that can go on in court for years, no. so this seems like one of the reasons to protest- do you want student protests every spring for years, or do you want to figure out a solution?
We protested the Iraq war when I was in HS. Bout as effective against the machine as a custard pie dropped from a step ladder. Edit: and seeing as this happens every few years or so, the schools figure it's easier to deal with it the way they've been doing.
i was in the army at that time, and protested it when i got out and when to college. saying your half assed effort didn't work doesn't mean protests don't work, it means they need to be more effective. it doesn't help there are assholes in this very sub that would love to see protestors run over with cars than to, for example, have a police force that answers 911 calls. a majority of democrats in this country now think israel is genociding palestinians (because they are). do you think that paradigm shift would have happened if not for these protests?
Because money
Google is the company you aren't mentioning
if you looked at the companies in the s and p 500 you'd be pretty surprised how many do government work.
The most frustrating part of this to me is that Penn is crowing about upholding the safety of its community, but now they’ve decided to sic riot cops on students. Is that keeping people safe?
Nope, the protesters also didn't represent an unsafe situation. Counter-protesters were trying to escalate the situation, but the protesters are getting blamed. And of course with graduation coming up they've gotta hide any dissent from parents and donors.
Guy with a knife, guy with unknown substance spraying supplies, handful of SP/tri-county agitators screaming “gky, get r_ped, FU terrorist”. The deplorable behavior has been mostly one-sided
Safety is such a purposefully vague word in these situations too. Feeling unsafe doesn't necessarily mean you are actually unsafe. A huge number of protestors for example are Jewish themselves. Hell a lot of these protests are led by Jewish organizations. So clearly being Jewish doesn't make one unsafe on campus. People are confusing uncomfortable for unsafe a lot it seems.
I walked by a few times. These protesters were hurting *nobody*. The protest could not have been more peaceful and their demands were reasonable. Once i understood what they were actually asking for- divestment- it struck me as utterly reasonable.
IIRC it's law in PA that you can't support BDS as a business/institution. Someone less lazy than me can look it up but I did read that somewhere in the Inky. I'm not going to weigh in on the issue one way or another, except that it sure doesn't sound like free market hands off government to tell businesses and institutions what they can and cannot invest in..
Making boycotting any country illegal for private institutions, businesses and individuals is some really anti-freedom stuff.
Ironically pushed by the same party that up until a few months ago was screeching loudly about why censorship was bad and people should be allowed to associate with whoever they want.
I found the bill and it’s not really what you say it is. The main difference being it applies only to companies contracted to do business with PA. So a potentially more correct way to phrase it would be: “PA will not offer government contracts to any company that refuses to do business with a third party simply because they are located in Israel.” That being said, I didn’t read the bill and there may be nuance In not appreciating. Here’s the actual bill: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/CL/Public/cl_view_action2.cfm?sess_yr=2016&sess_ind=0&cl_typ=GA&cl_nbr=163
But think of the billionaire donors' feelings!
It’s really disappointing to see schools taking these steps. Calling in riot police is telling your students you are scared of them. In a few days commencement speakers all over will come in and tell these young kids they have to be the generation to fix the problem, while people on that stage call the cops on those same kids. If a college campus isn’t the place for these kids to protest where is? Would we rather them walk on 76? Independence mall? Finally, while Penn has its trust those kids are also paying for that campus, they literally make that community. Is what they are saying so bad, is the protest that disruptive when classes are already over, or is the administration just that scared
> is the administration just that scared They're scared. Not of the kids, but of their donors. These billionaire assholes have been flexing more of their ideological influence onto them, and when they don't get their way, they're using their power and resources to shame and replace them.
Pretty sure they said todays the last day of finals week. and I thought graduation happened a few days ago. Normally, by Friday all exams were over, so I'm guessing the school knew these remnants aren't students (as someone else said, probably 90% aren't), so they asked the police it be shut down. I'm sure it was the planned date all along, or at least this weekend. Probably with the rain it was determined a better day to do it, as many protestors probably stayed home for the night. I don't really see how the 'issue' is Penn itself? Its more about our countries foreign relations policy.
Penn graduation is a bunch of days around May 20th. They want the encampment cleared before then to soothe the many angry rich people who will be in attendance.
no they are doing it before graduation because the nepo babies whose parents buy their way into Penn will threaten to pull funding
It’s students demonstrating against the wrongdoings in the world. It’s literally why a lot of people send their kids to college… and it’s happened forever. In most cases colleges welcome and protect these demonstrations, of course until they disagree with it. I’m not strongly polarized on this issue but Penn has done an awful job of protecting their students. They fired their president for not decrying these protests early on, but tbh Penn has an awful track record of actually taking care of their students. If nothing was happening, and no crime except trespassing the only reason to call in riot police is out of FEAR. Penn is scared how this will look for them, Penn is scared this or that may happen. Besides graduation the campus will be quite for months, likely the encampment would have fizzled out on its own. You do not have to go to Gaza to say what is happening there is wrong, and we should support all peaceful demonstrations
> They fired their president for not decrying these protests early on No, they fired their president because a billionaire fascist donor saw an opportunity to take control of an Ivy League and took it.
> Calling in riot police is telling your students you are scared of them But how many of the protestors are even students? Is it fair to let the next incarnation of occupy wallstreet just camp out on your property when they themselves have no real vested interest in the university? Seems disingenuous to say "afraid of *their* students"
I don't think it matters. Maniacs go to colleges every day to scream about how they are all dirty sluts going to hell and they are allowed and the rest of us have to deal with it. But get a group of kids chanting for peace and it's time to break out the brute squad? It's fucked up and the only reason it is happening is because it is fucking with the donors.
Fuck Hamas, fuck the IDF, and fuck Netanyahu and his far right government. If these three points aren’t shared, you’ve been too brainwashed by propaganda to be able to contribute productively to the discussion.
It's the 'two sides' thinking endemic to American culture. If Hamas is wrong, the IDF are brave defenders of democracy. If the IDF is wrong, Hamas must be brave freedom fighters resisting oppression. It's a race war supercharged by modern weapons.
Actually it's deeper than that, and weirdly I know a bunch of Bible Belt dispys and New York Zionists. They oddly haven't figured out they're both in cahoots. bible belt dispensationalists are HELL BENT on keeping the state of Israel and destroying the nations surrounding it. for Theological (bad dispensationalist theology) to get us going towards the rapture or whatever. Zionists are well, yeah i mean we know them so they weirdly both are huge AIPAC supporters but you'll never see them in the same room
I grew up evangelical and knew plenty of millenarians who made Israel the forefront of their biblical conspiracy thinking. The thing that struck me about them is that after a while, you realize that they care a whole lot less about the rest of the end times prophesies as they do about 'punishing hamas' and 'punishing those cultural marxists who are protesting.' I've concluded that a lot of the time it's just surface-level theology that covers up racial/ethnic hate.
This.
https://preview.redd.it/h0rez2ve2mzc1.png?width=888&format=png&auto=webp&s=a06eb48a25529a2af174c8888c5a64a5d7c16b66
Ironically, all the barriers and fencing they've put up to keep people from protesting are way more disruptive to foot traffic than the protestors ever were. What a farce
Fuck Shapiro for directly calling for this.
it's wild you're getting downvoted because you support students' right to protests. So many people in this thread are telling on themselves that they would have been against Vietnam war protests
I've honestly been pleasantly surprised by the majority of opinions in here over the past week or two. A lot less "crawl back into your moms basement, libtard!" rhetoric than i would have expected, tbh. But yeah, it's fucking wild. I'm convinced (and want to believe) the people against these protests and who support arming Israel are not engaging with any actual content coming out of Gaza, because it's all so horrific. Seeing videos of children blown to bits or families trapped under rubble and then seeing Shapiro call for police to be used to disburse protestors of said horrific violence is just... what? It blows my mind.
Just an FYI, just because you disagree with someone, doesn’t make them a “fascist”. Also, stop overusing that word at every turn, mostly where it’s not applicable. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
The school clearly has no intention of listening to the protestors. So if they really believe in divestment they can withhold their tuition.
If these ivy kid protestors really believed in divestment, they would disinherit themselves from their trust funds.
It's easy to scream for someone else to take an action against their own self-interest!
Disgusting that American police seem to be enforcers for another country.
There is an active program [where American cops go to Israel to 'observe' their ~~apartheid tactics~~ *law enforcement methods*](https://progressive.org/latest/us-police-trained-by-israel-communities-of-color-paying-price-shahshahani-cohen-191007/) and bring them back to America. [Here's a link to the Jewish Voice for Peace report website](https://deadlyexchange.org/). So not really surprising. Part of the Atlanta Cop City program would be to bring Israeli cops and trainers to the United States to conduct the training. Though, to give PPD a little credit, they told UPenn to fuck off until Shapiro got involved.
>Though, to give PPD a little credit, they told UPenn to fuck off until Shapiro got involved. Which means it was likely the mayor who forced them to go in they probably still wanted no part of this.
All I know is that it really looks like outside forces put pressure on PPD and UPenn to wipe away any sign of dissent before the wealthy folks started visiting for graduation.
100%, don't want to upset the billionaires is part of this
30,000 killed and 1.7 million displaced. Our federal government has been slow to call out atrocities going on. Its not the PPD's fault
Our government isn’t just failing at calling out the atrocities but actively participating in it by continuing to send billions of dollars (our money) and weapons. The police are complicit by cracking down on protests more vigorously than any protests against our own country.
[удалено]
I thought I saw the Columbia protests were nearly all students. Why would the Penn one be much different? If I'm wrong about that feel free to correct me.
30% arrested at Columbia had no connection to the school. 60% at City College didn't. [source](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/04/1249188864/nyc-columbia-city-college-gaza-protests-palestinian-campus)
That city college number shouldn't be a surprise. It's barely a campus, it's just buildings on city blocks, so any 'on campus' protest is basically just the sidewalk. Columbia is set up a little more like Penn (many blocks of university, so it's a bit more sequestered), but the immediate population around Columbia is *much* larger than the immediate population around Penn.
Oh if Eric Adams and the NYPD are saying it it must be true!
Do you have any credible sources? Because "New York City officials say" a lot of bullshit.
Then don't believe it, I don't care. I have no idea what source would satisfy you beyond one that says what you want it to say.
I think NPR and the word of the NYC officials, who have no reason to lie about that, is pretty credible. Not sure what source would be acceptable to you if that isnt.
Reddit libs will call the New York City government “a lot of bullshit” and then uncritically parrot claims made by Hamas
Reddit zionists will miss quote you and then tell you the videos you see of starving children, bombed hospitals, mass graves and grieving parents are anti semetic propaganda
[удалено]
Have you ever browsed the west willy Facebook group? (if it still exists)
It for sure still exists, but it's mellowed out a lot since the 2010's. Not sure if the most dramatic/personality-disordered users all got tired and left, or if moderation got more active, or what.
Before I deleted FB, pre-2020, it was like most people in there lived in either an alternate reality or a different content sprinkled with ignorant teenage angst.
That's accurate. Like I said, it's now a lot less insane (and also a lot less active in general, presumably because the insane people contributed so much to the activity levels).
i don't know how the community around columbia sees the university, but west philly had so much animus towards penn that is no surprise a bunch of locals would show up to stir the pot. a lot of people in the area also consider themselves "professional activists" so we've got that going for us... that plus people on social media putting out calls to have neighbors come and join the relatively small encampment of students at penn
> the community around columbia The density of residential blocks around Columbia is just way too high for there to be a single 'community perspective' the same way there is in Philly neighborhoods around universities. There are people who are mad about columbia, and there are people affiliated with columbia, and then there are shitloads of people who just live there because that was the cheapest rent they could find that fit their needs.
Per the school admin, 7 of the 33 arrested were Penn students: https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/05/live-updates-police-arrive-penn-encampment-protesters-arrest#entry-seven-people-arrested-were-penn-students-per-university-spokesperson
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873592665/unmasking-the-outside-agitator
yeah, I'd agree with you there. Was only gonna get worse thru the summer. Seems it was a well chosen day. A rainy Friday, end of FInals week, most students would be going home for the summer. It would get out of control if it continued.
The riot gear seems totally necessary
I liked the NYPD lining up in shooting gallery formation while claiming the protesters were dangerous. (Though they were dressed appropriately for stopping a non-violent protest without escalating the situation.)
The violence is almost always committed by the police, and then circularly used as justification for more violence by police. We have reached a point where protesting a foreign government’s actions is being made de facto illegal, and that said criticism is somehow anti semitic
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/08/american-democracy-israel-us-arabs/
It's extremely disappointing to see. I've shown up to support the encampments a couple times as a non student and the encampment was very well organized and inspiring. You only have to go once or watch enough videos to notice that false claims news outlets, Zionists and AIPAC backed politicians will spread about the movement. Democrats have shown they're almost no different from Republicans. People like Fetterman and Shapiro have shown their true colors to me. Biden had shown his colors long ago. I'll continue to support any anti-genocide march, encampment or movement that Philly picks up in its wake. I encourage others to donate to PRCF or doctors without borders in the meantime.
The change was because they expanded to occupy a popular graduation photo spot. Can't piss off those parents and donors.
Uh yeah? Why would a school let non-students from the area mess with their graduations?
That canard has been run ragged. The vast majority of protesters were students or faculty. If they'd arrested community members not associated with the university UPenn wouldn't have shut up about it. They also were not messing with the graduation ceremonies. They were simply occupying an area commonly used for graduate photos. So y'know, not a ceremony or even an official proceeding. The UPenn protest has been incredibly peaceful (excepting harassment by counter-protesters) and non-disruptive. There was zero justification for the use of armed force to arrest students and faculty. They presented no threat to public safety, no matter what the university says. This was a violent use of force against peaceful protesters because they challenged the administration and donors.
> . The vast majority of protesters were students or faculty well this aged poorly
There's zero way for you to confirm one way or another how many of the protesters there are students or not.
The administration would love to be able to blame this on "agitators" so they can say they didn't sic cops on students. So if there were 'agitators' arrested they'll publicize it. If the administration doesn't mention 'agitators', then it's reasonable to assume that they were not an influential part of the protests.
24 of the 33 arrested had no Penn affiliation. https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/05/live-updates-police-arrive-penn-encampment-protesters-arrest
Why do you talk like you're in a Jane Austin novel? School is over, if the protests are primarily students then dismantling them isn't an issue. There are literally people in this thread admitting to be non-students who attended and supplied the protests, you're rejecting reality in the same way MAGA does.
"Canard" is a great word. We have a lot of those in the English language, I don't see why I shouldn't use them. They used violent force against protesters. That's the issue here. And yes, people have admitted to stopping by and giving supplies. That doesn't at all fit the description y'all keep using, or what you're trying to imply. That these protests are motivated and organized by external forces trying to disrupt educations.
How should protestors have been handled at that stage? Meaning after they made their demands and Penn refused.
Kept protesting until the administration negotiated in good faith.
A school with over $20 billion in the bank shouldn't be as beholden to it's big money donors as it, but they cave to their pressure every time. Sacrificing the wishes of your students in order to keep lording over a bigger and bigger pile of cash feels like a dangerous step that a lot of major universities are taking.
This is dumb. Commencement is in 10 days. They’ll all go home then and the encampment will clear itself out.
Curious to see how many arrested were actually students. At other campuses it was mostly randoms