LOS ANGELES, May 2, 2024 (Xinhua) — Photo taken with a mobile phone on May 2, 2024 shows police officers breaking through the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). (Photo by Yang Pingjun/Xinhua)
The question mark is no longer needed. We know where they have gone—”Gone to graveyards, every one”—and we know the consequences: a world constantly at war.
Although routinely disparaged by mainstream reporting as having no meaning or results—as the Vietnam protests were disparaged—and resisted with increasing violence, the students at big and small colleges and universities are taking risks for us, the silent older generations. They are suffering from chemical spray in their faces (in Virginia a policeman even pulled off a protester’s goggles to spray her in the eyes), battered with shields, knocked down, hand-cuffed, jailed, barred from their campuses and from graduations—and refused any form of support or help by their administrations. Only Middlebury College has been willing to meet with its demonstrators and listen to their demands. The big oligarchs—Harvard, and Columbia—refuse all contact, call in the riot police, and punish with every means at hand.
Why are we paying outrageous tuitions to institutions that treat their students like criminals?
As the genocide continues, as we learn of the deaths of thousands of children and the maiming of many more, these students are the only voices raised in protest. Yes, they are loud and disorderly. Yes, tents on immaculate college lawns look bad at graduation ceremonies. But when have soft voices and pleasant faces brought about any kind of change?
As during the Civil Rights marches, “outsiders” are said by reporters to have infiltrated the students and even to be leading the protests, but only one such person identified has been identified. It is always easier to turn on your own when you believe they are being led, and led astray, by “outsiders,” a falsification of home-grown activists and activism.
Here and there a faculty member has stood with the students but I have yet to hear of a a parent who has taken such a stand or even criticized administrations that refuse to parlay and call in the riot police.
Surely, at least one of the policemen battering demonstrators has a son or a daughter of college age and sees if only for an instant that face in the face he is grinding into the pavement.
A student protests before the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University shortly before the Kent State Shootings. May 4, 1970. Photo: Student John Filo – 15 May 1970 edition of LIFE magazine (Wikipedia).
Thank you, Sallie! My sentiments exactly – What is all that campus space for anyway!?
Where have all the flowers gone? As the song goes,”long time passing”. When will we ever learn? Unfortunately it appears we are on the “rinse and repeat” cycle. May the madness end. The military-industrial complex please take your bows and exit the stage tout de suite.