USPCN Statement: Support the Student Revolutionaries Fighting for a Free Palestine

The U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) works closely with and unequivocally supports Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP); other student activists, organizers, and organizations, including Students for a Democratic Society; and faculty and staff all across the country, as they 1) build encampments on a number of campuses to denounce their respective institutions’ complicity in the U.S.-funded Israeli genocide against our Palestinian people of Gaza, and 2) demand immediate divestment from any and all collaboration with the racist, zionist state of Israel. 

Acts of organized protest and civil disobedience have always played a pivotal role in the history of student activism in the U.S., and today at Columbia, Northwestern, Ohio State, Brown, University of Southern California (USC), Michigan, Texas-Austin, Minnesota, and many other colleges and universities, we are reminded of the powerful student uprisings of the 1960s and early 1970s. Emerging from the civil rights movement at that time, a new era of protest saw students bravely defy and reject the status quo, to fight for racial justice and challenge U.S. imperialism as it waged its horrific war in Vietnam, the war that was won by the Vietnamese on their path to national liberation and socialism. 

In 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, the National Guard shot and killed four student anti-war protesters and wounded nine others; only 10 days later, racist police opened fire on Black students at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Mississippi, killing two and injuring 12 at one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). 

We have not seen a student movement like this one in support of Palestine since the protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam and Cambodia, as students make certain today that they will not stay silent while college and university administrations support the genocide of our people in Gaza – where over 35,000 have already been killed since October 2023 – and the rest of Palestine. We are clearly at a generational crossroads. And in response to this massive escalation of student action, we have also seen a huge surge in militarized repression of the movement for Palestinian rights.

At Columbia University, a number of student leaders of the encampment were first suspended, establishing the pretext for the NYPD – the same NYPD that trains and shares tactics with the Israeli Occupation Forces and oppresses our Black, brown, and other marginalized communities here in the U.S. – to be called in by the administration to forcefully arrest them for trespassing. Over 100 Columbia students were arrested all told, and police repression led to arrests at the University of Minnesota and Ohio State University as well, plus frightening scenes of state troopers in riot gear attacking and arresting 34 students at the University of Texas at Austin.

USPCN denounces these reactionary attempts by college and university administrators, especially Columbia’s Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, to suppress and silence our students and their supporters. We also denounce U.S. Congresspeople, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson; other legislators like New York Mayor Eric Adams; and racist, zionist faculty and staff, such as Columbia assistant professor Shai Davidai; who are calling for the National Guard and additional law enforcement to be sent to campuses to increase the repression. These crackdowns of protests are rooted in racism and national oppression, with students vilified and targeted only because they are Palestinian, Arab, or solidarity activists condemning Israel and zionism and supporting justice and liberation for Palestine.

We uplift the demand of “No Business as Usual” for all institutions and entities complicit in the genocide, and call on everyone, everywhere in the U.S. to join USPCN and support the encampments and protests at a campus near you!

And we again remind all that this massive repression is happening because Israel, its zionist supporters here, and Genocide Joe and his government all recognize that the Palestinian resistance and people in Gaza are defeating Israel, that our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem and 1948 Palestine are resisting too, and that Palestinians and our supporters in the U.S. are winning as well – organizing effectively and impactfully, winning hearts and minds, and finally convincing the general public that Israel is a racist, white supremacist, apartheid, criminal state that is on its last legs.

• Support all the encampments, all the SJPs, and all the student protesters for Palestine across the U.S.! 

• Support BDS, especially divestment from Israel on campuses everywhere!

• Stop police, FBI, National Guard, and administrative repression of Palestinian students and their supporters!

• Stop the Genocide in Palestine! Stop Arming Israel! End U.S. Aid to Israel! And Palestine Will Be Free – From the River to the Sea!

U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)

Wednesday, April 24th, 2024