One thing that I don't think has really been internalized by enough folks is that /any/ direct citizen-police confrontation is dangerous, and in the US, due to gun and police issues, can be very dangerous or deadly. Calling in cops doesn't mean someone /will/ die. But it does mean someone /might/.
If you're president of a university and there's a protest you don't like, do you call the cops? Look. Put aside the first amendment stuff. That's great. It matters later. It's not the important thing in the instant: what matters is you're creating a situation that is actively dangerous for students
And for what? For a rule? Who gives a shit? Boo-fuckety-hoo. If the protest is peaceful--and to be clear, the conversation becomes less clear-cut very quickly if it is not--then why are you putting students at risk to punish their defiance? That's putting your feelings ahead of their safety
I don't necessarily expect external pundits to give a shit about students or their safety. Tho I'll still notice when they don't. But it is fundamentally unacceptable--a total abdication of their ultimate responsibility--when a university president doesn't. They should resign.
I am just astonished at watching people who are putatively smart be completely rolled by the most obvious bad-faith lines ever. (Acknowledging that "putatively" is doing a lot of work here.)
A portion of the kids protesting at Emory had also been protesting Cop City, because they don't think cops need a playground to teach them to become more militarized. And the cops' totally overblown response to the protest pretty much proved their point.
What I don't understand is why stakeholders like parents don't react more strongly to these actions. If my kids were at a university that called the cops on them my problem would not be with the demonstrators. I'd be livid.
"There is no human situation that cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman" – Brendan Behan
But it only takes one terrorist to blow the whole thing up and they're probably hovering around these protests.😬
1000% in agreement. This needs to be trumpeted from any available rooftops.
These interactions, especially now, in 2024, are *actively dangerous.*
If you are putting your charges, the literal lifeblood of your institution, into danger, you best have an unimpeachable reason.
They are not answering to their students, or their faculty, as much as we might hope they would. They are really there to keep everything orderly for the Trustees/Regents, the Governor, and big-shot alumni in high places who might make influential financial decisions.
One thing I'm seeing is a lot of interviews with students who are elaborating on how a protest is not peaceful based on signs, on chants, and on direct "yelling at each other" - and I think we need to really think about what is not peaceful and what is, and whether feeling uncomfortable is violence.
Is a sign stating Israel shouldn't exist violent? Is a sign stating that a Palestinian state shouldn't exist violent? Is one stating that a Palestinian state should exist violent? I've heard opposing takes on each of these, some clearly talking points, others not yet thinking through implications.
Look, there a ton about the rhetoric at these protests that I find troubling. And I have to say, my interest in what stocks university endowments invest in is so far beyond "I do not give a shit" that it's almost difficult to wrap my head around. But call the cops on students and we have a problem.
Agree calling law enforcement, particularly non-campus law enforcement, is really asking for escalation and imposing risk. Particularly when the protest is not blocking actual functions of the university, and the mere location of the protest is the complained about activity.
AND, finally, when we demonstrate this escalation, forceful removal of protestors, for peaceful (as most I have seen have been when defined as not having physical violence) protests, it excuses behavior in many other places where there are bad intentions, where there is severe authoritarian violence
I wonder whether some of this is driven by a concern about future protests and viewpoint discrimination. If they allow these protestors to stay and then a bunch of Proud-Boys-aligned students set up next, I assume the school has to treat them to same way if their protest behavior is the same.
The Republicans were all up in arms that any university might not allow right-wing outside agitators come to their campuses and give speeches about why
(((Cultural Marxism))) Must Be Destroyed
and why Western Civilization is Superior To (((Degeneracy)))
and now pretend to be against antisemitism.
Protests that violated campus rules in a similar way? I think that's the key question. If you have rules but enforce them in a viewpoint discriminatory way, that's a 1A violation. (Though Columbia doesn't have to adhere to 1A, obviously.)
So maybe I just answered my own question! Columbia could simply decide to enforce the rules against a future Proud Boys protest but not against this one. A public university couldn't.
One of the school districts where I live is discussing putting cops back in their jr/sr high schools, armed this time, and it's really best of times for North American cops these days. ACAB though. Always ACAB.
There's an unholy mix of the following at play:
-Refusing to see or accept that police often bring or escalate violence.
-Not caring that police will bring or escalate violence.
-Wanting police to bring or escalate violence.
And too many institutions permit plausible deniability of all 3.
In some of the Scandinavian countries, there is 6000-7500 of training before they hit the seats.
We make hair stylists do more training than some departments do here. Is this something we could carrot and stick w/ federal dollars? Extra funds to train to a national standard?
No doubt it would help. I think one of the major hurdles, though is that newer officers have been known to follow the lead of more senior officers rather than their training, so it will take some active effort to dislodge some of these bad practices.
But they keep doing it. At the time, they have plenty of establishment support for getting rough with protesters, though twenty years later everyone will agree it was an abomination.
I live in Portland, OR and the daughter of the woman who lives across the street from me was the one from "Wall of Moms" who almost lost her eye after getting shot in the face w/a rubber bullet
Pwn - I don't think I've ever encountered any study of injuries related to mass-protest events and how they correlate to reports of police brutality, but I feel like that would be an interesting (& perhaps illustrative) study, no?
