IMPORTANT NEW BOOK:

We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
by Kellie Carter Jackson
Seal Press, 2024

[Publication date: June 4, 2024] 

An “unsparing, erudite, and incisive” (Jelani Cobb) reframing of the past and present of Black resistance—both nonviolent and violent—to white supremacy

Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.  
 
The dismissal of “Black violence” as an illegitimate form of resistance is itself a manifestation of white supremacy, a distraction from the insidious, unrelenting violence of structural racism. Force—from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt—has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions. But violence is only one tool among many. Carter Jackson examines other, no less vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away. 
 
Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

REVIEWS:

“Enthralling…A fascinating array of histories that highlight the ingeniousness, efficacy, and relatability of Black political maneuvering across several centuries of oppression…By astutely delineating how Black resistance strategies have always existed on a spectrum between the binary of nonviolence vs. violence, Carter Jackson demolishes an unnecessarily rigid distinction. The result is an invigorating paradigm shift.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Urgent [and] uncompromising.”―Kirkus (starred review)

“Unsparing, erudite, and incisive, We Refuse is an insurgent history. Kellie Carter Jackson has produced a book that is every bit as urgent as the subject matter she so brilliantly writes about.”―Jelani Cobb, coeditor of The Matter of Black Lives

“Kellie Carter Jackson is fearless. She is not afraid to tell you want she thinks, share what she knows, or challenge prevailing wisdom. We Refuse is proof. She taps the wellsprings of memory, archives, oral histories, literature, imagination, and personal experience to tell a very Black story of armed resistance, strategic retreat, unbreakable resolve, and joyous rapture. Reading this book will cause discomfort in some folks, provoke cheers in others. But I doubt anyone will be able to put it down.”―Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams

“What does it mean to use violence as a means of resistance? How has violent resistance shaped Black radical freedom movements, despite the popular notion that peaceful pleas for humanity or moderate negotiations with white supremacist oppression are the only path to racial justice? In We Refuse, Kellie Carter Jackson provides a cogent, provocative, and ultimately inspiring re-evaluation of how violence—in all its forms—has been used by Black people to resist slavery and its afterlives. Both radical history and racial reckoning, this book is sure to become a canonical text. Through extensive research and brilliant analysis of Black communities and our politics, We Refuse is a timely re-writing of the African American past, one that forces us to reframe our discussion of our beloved civil rights icons, our assumptions about our politics, and our collective understanding of what it means to resist.”―Kerri K. Greenidge, author of The Grimkes

“From one of our generation’s most exciting historians, We Refuse changes the way we understand the contours and legacy of the Black freedom struggle. Blending fierce analysis with touching personal vignettes, Kellie Carter Jackson’s essential new book enhances the most pressing debates of our time and will stay with readers long after they finish.”―Elizabeth Hinton, author of America on Fire

“Kellie Carter Jackson tells a nuanced and textured story about how African Americans, over many centuries, have refused racism by any means necessary. Her book thoughtfully reveals that nonviolence is just one of the many strategies Black people have used to assert their humanity and achieve full equality in this country. It is a must-read for all of us committed to understanding and, hopefully, joining the long freedom struggle.”―Salamishah Tillet, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 

Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. Her book Force and Freedom was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award. She is the cohost of the Radiotopia podcast “This Day in Esoteric Political History.” She lives outside of Boston with her husband and three children. 

 

Former Scumbag-In-Chief And Present Day Pathological Liar, Criminal, Thief, Sexual Predator, White Supremacist, Misogynist, Mob Boss, Conman, Cult Leader, Deadly Insurrectionist, Raging Psychopath and Fascist Donald J. Trump Found Guilty On All 34 Felonious Counts. He is Now Officially A CONVICTED FELON:

DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/nyregion/trump-convicted-hush-money-trial.htmlhttps://

Trump Convicted on All Counts to Become America’s First Felon President

A Manhattan jury found that he had falsified business records to conceal a sex scandal that could have hindered his 2016 campaign for the White House.

 

Donald J. Trump could get probation or as much as four years in prison. He has promised to appeal his conviction. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

by Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich, Maggie Haberman, Kate Christobek, Jesse McKinley and William K. Rashbaum
May 30, 2024
New York Times

Leer en español

Donald J. Trump was convicted on Thursday of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign, capping an extraordinary trial that tested the resilience of the American justice system and transformed the former commander in chief into a felon.

The guilty verdict in Manhattan — across the board, on all 34 counts — will reverberate throughout the nation and the world as it ushers in a new era of presidential politics. Mr. Trump will carry the stain of the verdict during his third run for the White House as voters now choose between an unpopular incumbent and a convicted criminal.

While it was once unthinkable that Americans would elect a felon as their leader, Mr. Trump’s insurgent behavior delights his supporters as he bulldozes the country’s norms. Now, the man who refused to accept his 2020 election loss is already seeking to delegitimize his conviction, attempting to assert the primacy of his raw political power over the nation’s rule of law.

 

 

The Trump Manhattan Criminal Verdict, Count By Count

Former President Donald J. Trump faced 34 felony charges of falsifying business records, related to the reimbursement of hush money paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels in order to cover up a sex scandal around the 2016 presidential election.

As Mr. Trump learned his fate on Thursday, he showed little emotion, shutting his eyes and slowly shaking his head while a hush descended over the courtroom. But when he emerged, holding his jaw tense, the former president spoke to the assembled television cameras. He declared that the verdict was “a disgrace” and, with a somber expression, proclaimed: “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5, by the people,” referring to Election Day.

The judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, released Mr. Trump on his own recognizance and set his sentencing for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention convenes and anoints him as the presidential nominee.

Alvin L. Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the case, declined to reveal Thursday whether he would seek a prison term. The judge could put Mr. Trump behind bars for up to four years, but the former president could receive probation instead, and may never see the inside of a prison cell. His appeal could drag on for months or more, and he will remain free to campaign for the presidency while he awaits his punishment.

The 12 New Yorkers who composed the jury needed nearly 10 hours to decide a case stemming from Mr. Trump’s first White House run, when, prosecutors say, he perpetrated a fraud on the American people. The case — colored by tabloid intrigue, secret payoffs and an Oval Office pact that echoed the Watergate era — spotlighted months of scheming that begot a hush-money payment to a porn star and a plot to falsify documents to bury all trace of that deal.

“Guilty,” the jury foreman declared into a microphone 34 times, one for each false record, before he and his fellow jurors, whose names were withheld from the public for their safety, filed out of the Lower Manhattan courtroom.

Over weeks of testimony, the jury had met a varied cast of characters, including a tabloid maestro, a campaign spokeswoman and the porn star, Stormy Daniels. Their testimony built to an epic showdown between the men at the heart of the case: Mr. Trump, a real estate mogul turned reality-television impresario who exported his smash-mouth instincts to presidential politics; and the star witness against him, Michael D. Cohen, the do-anything fixer whose loyalty he lost.

Michael D. Cohen made the $130,000 hush-money payment, but later turned against the man he idolized. Credit:  Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

In the waning days of the 2016 campaign, Mr. Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to silence her story of a sexual liaison with Mr. Trump, who then agreed to “cook the books” to reimburse his fixer, prosecutors said. Defense lawyers attacked Mr. Cohen’s credibility — they noted that he once pleaded guilty to lying — and argued that Mr. Trump had never falsified any records.

But in closing arguments, one of Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors said that Mr. Cohen had told his lies for Mr. Trump. “We didn’t choose Michael Cohen to be our witness; we didn’t pick him up at the witness store,” said the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass. The former president, he said, had hired Mr. Cohen “because he was willing to lie and cheat on Mr. Trump’s behalf.”

Mr. Trump, who repeatedly violated a judge’s order barring him from attacking Mr. Cohen and the jury, attended every day of the trial in a courthouse that had long ago lost its majesty, a fading hulk with cracked wood paneling and yellowed fluorescent lighting that suited the case’s seedier elements. There, in the center of a city justice system that accommodates all manner of mayhem, the former president glowered, muttered and often closed his eyes, spending much of the trial either in a meditative state or apparently asleep.

Mr. Trump still faces three other indictments in three other jurisdictions, but with those cases mired in delays, this was likely to be his only trial before Election Day. The other prosecutions concern loftier issues — Mr. Trump is charged with mishandling classified documents in Florida and plotting to subvert democracy in Washington and Georgia — but this trial sprang from the seamy milieu that had made him famous, if not notorious, as a New York gossip-page fixture.

The conviction, a humiliating defeat for a man who has dwelled in legal gray zones for decades, brings the nation’s highest office to a new low: Mr. Trump is the first president to lose, or even to face, a criminal trial.

The prosecution unfolded against the backdrop of a politically polarized nation, and reactions to the verdict could reflect that divide. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, called the verdict a “shameful day in American history” while President Biden urged people to vote, saying, “There’s only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box.”

Mr. Trump’s adversaries have long hoped a conviction would wipe the former president from the political map. For them, the case could represent a rare moment of catharsis: comeuppance for a man who, in their minds, poisoned the institution of the presidency.

Yet nothing in the Constitution prevents a felon from serving in the White House. And to Mr. Trump’s base, he remains not just a man but a movement. The more legal tumult he endures, the more his supporters revere him.

Mr. Trump has cast himself as a political martyr to his most fervent supporters as he campaigns for another term as president. Credit: Dave Sanders for The New York Times

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump is expected to harness that image of an outlaw idol, using his conviction to paint himself as a political prisoner and the victim of a Democratic cabal. During the trial, he cast the jurors as 12 angry liberals from a hometown that had turned against him, even though they were participating in a tradition so central to American democracy that it is older than the presidency itself. And he attacked Mr. Bragg, the elected district attorney, falsely claiming he was an extension of President Biden’s campaign.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on the novel nature of Mr. Bragg’s case. In New York, falsifying records is a misdemeanor, unless they were faked to hide another crime. To elevate the charges to felonies, Mr. Bragg argued that Mr. Trump had falsified the records to conceal an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.

The defense argued that Mr. Bragg was stretching the law, deploying a little-known state statute in a case involving a federal election. That approach could, they argue, lay the groundwork for an appeal.

Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, also sought to play down the importance of the case, deriding the false records as mere “pieces of paper.”

Yet the verdict is a career-defining victory for Mr. Bragg, who had characterized the fakery as an affront to New York, the financial capital of the world.

“Our job is to follow the facts without fear or favor, and that’s what we did here,” Mr. Bragg said at a news conference in the wake of the verdict. He then paused for a moment. “I did my job. We did our jobs.” And while he said he anticipated a cacophonous reaction to the conviction, he added that “the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken.”
The Conspiracy

Five years ago, when Mr. Bragg announced his run for district attorney, he vowed to shake up the criminal justice system in Manhattan. No more, he said, would there be two systems — one for the rich and one for everyone else. He then brought a difficult case against the 45th president, charging Mr. Trump, as he would any other defendant, with the innocuous-sounding crime of falsifying business records.

Mr. Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of that charge, one for each document he falsified as he reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels. The records included 11 invoices Mr. Cohen submitted, 12 entries in Mr. Trump’s ledger and 11 checks sent to the former fixer.

Mr. Trump signed nine of the checks from the White House, his own outsize Sharpie signature sealing his fate.

The documents, prosecutors argued, disguised the nature of the repayment to Mr. Cohen. There were no references to the hush money, only to ordinary legal expenses that arose from a “retainer” agreement.

Mr. Blanche argued that the records were accurate — Mr. Cohen, after all, was a lawyer who had expenses — but the prosecution showed that the expenses and the retainer were both fictional. Mr. Blanche also sought to minimize the election plot, asserting that “every campaign in this country is a conspiracy.” But Mr. Bragg argued that the American people were victims, deprived of important information about the candidate, and that the tactics of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign were not only distasteful, but unlawful.

Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, argued that the faked records were meant to hoodwink American voters. Credit: Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors, eliciting lurid testimony of sex and scandal, persuaded the jury that Mr. Trump had orchestrated a conspiracy with Mr. Cohen and David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, to buy and bury stories that could have upended his candidacy. It began with a meeting in summer 2015 at Mr. Trump’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters — prosecutors called it “the Trump Tower conspiracy” — and ran through Election Day 2016.

Mr. Pecker, the prosecution’s leadoff witness, nonchalantly explained to the jurors how the co-conspirators had soon confronted salacious stories about the candidate’s sex life.

The first came from a doorman at a Trump building who had heard a false rumor that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock. Another belonged to a former Playboy model who said she had carried on a monthslong affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker bought both of those stories and never published them, a practice known as “catch and kill,” a dark art in the supermarket tabloid world.

After the election, Mr. Pecker testified, Mr. Trump summoned him to Trump Tower. There, the president-elect, having just met with the head of the F.B.I., thanked Mr. Pecker for burying the stories.

Mr. Trump was supposed to repay Mr. Pecker, and prosecutors played a surreptitious recording that Mr. Cohen had made of Mr. Trump, who wanted to buy all the dirt that The Enquirer had accumulated on him over the years, in case something happened to the publisher or his tabloid.

“Maybe he gets hit by a truck,” Mr. Trump said, instructing Mr. Cohen to “pay with cash.”

 
The Porn Star

Mr. Pecker ultimately refused Mr. Trump’s payment, worried that it might implicate him in a crime.

And he wanted nothing to do with purchasing the third and most troublesome story — Ms. Daniels’s account of sex with Mr. Trump. She was shopping it at a vulnerable moment for the Trump campaign, just as the world heard a recording in which he boasted about grabbing women by the genitals. The tape, from the set of “Access Hollywood,” sent the campaign into a frenzy, according to testimony from Hope Hicks, its former spokeswoman.

Ms. Hicks, who teared up on the stand, took jurors behind the campaign’s scenes as Mr. Trump careened from one crisis to the next. He denied Ms. Daniels’s story, telling Ms. Hicks it was “absolutely, unequivocally untrue.” (He denies it still, and Mr. Blanche portrayed Ms. Daniels as an extortionist.)

The week after Ms. Hicks testified, Ms. Daniels showed up to contradict Mr. Trump from the stand, offering a graphic recounting. In riveting testimony, she described how he had summoned her for dinner inside a palatial Lake Tahoe, Nev., hotel suite in 2006. She returned from the bathroom and found Mr. Trump in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, she said. Then, they had sex.

PHOTO:  Stormy Daniels testified in graphic detail about a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006. Credit: Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

“I was staring up at the ceiling, wondering how I got there,” she told the jury, adding that the act was brief and that Mr. Trump did not wear a condom.

Ms. Daniels said that when she asked Mr. Trump about his wife, he told her not to worry, that they didn’t even sleep in the same room — testimony that prompted Mr. Trump to shake his head in disgust and mutter “bullshit” to his lawyers. His outburst was loud enough that it later drew a rebuke from Justice Merchan, who called it “contemptuous.”

The former president’s lawyers, cross-examining Ms. Daniels, sought to paint her as an opportunist capitalizing on a fiction, noting that she had sold “Team Stormy” T-shirts, a $40 “Patron Saint of Indictments” candle and even a comic book dramatizing her clash with the former president.

“You’re celebrating the indictment by selling things from your store, right?” a defense lawyer asked.

“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” Ms. Daniels replied, perhaps a reference to his prolific merchandise-peddling.

The sordid elements of her testimony had little bearing on the charges of faked business records. Her payoff did. In a crucial passage of testimony, Ms. Daniels confirmed that she had “accepted an offer” from Mr. Cohen to stay silent.
 

The Showdown

Even that did not prove that Mr. Trump had falsified records to disguise his reimbursement of Mr. Cohen. For that, the prosecution needed Mr. Cohen himself.

During his decade as a Trump henchman, Mr. Cohen distinguished himself with his volatility. On the stand, however, he was mostly steady, and he offered jurors the only direct link between the former president and the false records.

Mr. Cohen testified that, just days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, he had met with the president-elect at Trump Tower. There, he said, Mr. Trump gave his blessing to a simple way to hide the payoff while making Mr. Cohen whole: pretend the reimbursement was for legal work. Mr. Trump’s chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, handled the details, but as was customary, Mr. Cohen testified, “the boss” granted permission.

During closing arguments, the prosecution sought to corroborate Mr. Cohen’s account, producing what one prosecutor called “the smoking guns” of the case: Mr. Weisselberg’s handwritten notes about the reimbursement. The jotting appeared on a copy of Mr. Cohen’s bank statement — the very one showing that Mr. Cohen had paid off Ms. Daniels.

“Did Mr. Weisselberg say in front of Mr. Trump that those monthly payments would be, you know, like a retainer for legal services?” Susan Hoffinger, one of the prosecutors, asked Mr. Cohen.

“Yes,” he said.

“What, if anything, did Mr. Trump say at that time?” she also asked.

“He approved it,” Mr. Cohen replied, noting that Mr. Trump had then added: “This is going to be one heck of a ride in D.C.”

The plot reached into the Oval Office, where Mr. Cohen said he met again with Mr. Trump, who promised that a check would soon arrive.

A year later, they had a falling-out after the hush-money deal came to light in The Wall Street Journal, and Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal crimes involving the hush money. Mr. Trump washed his hands of Mr. Cohen, who turned on the man he had once idolized.

During Mr. Cohen’s testimony, Mr. Trump brought his campaign to the courtroom, summoning an entourage of supporters to sit in the rows behind the defense table. The guests included the speaker of the House and other members of Congress, his adult sons, the actor Joe Piscopo and a former leader of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang.

With Mr. Cohen on the stand, Mr. Blanche assailed his credibility, highlighting his criminal record, his pattern of lies and his obsession with exacting revenge on Mr. Trump. Mr. Blanche also argued that Mr. Cohen had profited from his hatred for Mr. Trump with two books and a lucrative podcast deal. He played the jury an excerpt from the podcast in which the former fixer sounded nearly maniacal as he reveled in the news of Mr. Trump’s 2023 indictment in the case.

“I truly hope that this man ends up in prison,” Mr. Cohen said giddily.

On the stand, Mr. Cohen was more subdued. He bent, but did not break under the pressure. And when the prosecution questioned him a second time, he stuck to his testimony that Mr. Trump had approved the scheme to falsify the records.

“When you submitted each of your 11 invoices,” Ms. Hoffinger asked, “was that true or false?”

“It was false,” Mr. Cohen confirmed.

And the check stubs that reflected a supposed retainer?

“False.”

Mr. Blanche argued that Mr. Trump had signed the checks without paying them much mind, and that Mr. Cohen was responsible for the invoices. But the prosecution highlighted evidence that portrayed Mr. Trump as a micromanager who would never miss that sort of detail, including Mr. Trump’s own books, which contained a chapter called “How to Pinch Pennies” and the advice “always question invoices.”

The criminal conviction capped a brutal stretch of legal defeats for Mr. Trump in New York. He started the year in a federal courthouse, where a jury found him liable for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll when he claimed he hadn’t sexually abused her, and ordered him to pay her more than $80 million. The next month, a judge concluded that Mr. Trump had fraudulently inflated his net worth to win favorable financial deals, and imposed a judgment of more than $450 million.

While those cases delivered devastating personal financial blows, only Mr. Bragg’s trial could send the former president to prison, and America into an era of uncertainty.

“This is long from over,” Mr. Trump declared on Thursday, minutes after his conviction.

Wesley Parnell and Michael Rothfeld contributed reporting.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:


Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, writing about public corruption. He has been covering the various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies. More about Ben Protess

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state criminal courts in Manhattan. More about Jonah E. Bromwich

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

Kate Christobek is a reporter covering the civil and criminal cases against former president Donald J. Trump for The Times. More about Kate Christobek

Jesse McKinley is a Times reporter covering upstate New York, courts and politics. More about Jesse McKinley

William K. Rashbaum is a Times reporter covering municipal and political corruption, the courts and broader law enforcement topics in New York. More about William K. Rashbaum

See more on: Trump N.Y. Hush Money Case, Donald Trump, 2024 Elections, U.S. Politics

Trump guilty on all counts in historic criminal trial

 VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt6OxyS3oi0

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May 30, 2024 

 

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Journalist, Scholar, Activist, Public Intellectual, and Teacher Dr. Steven Thrasher On How and Why We Are All Being Lied To By Politicians, Corporate Media, and University Administrators About Pro-Palestinian Protests on College campuses throughout the Country and the Dire Reality of the Ongoing Genocide In Gaza Directly Aided, Funded, and Abetted by the Biden Administration and the American Congress

https://lithub.com/you-are-being-lied-to-about-gaza-solidarity-camps-by-university-presidents-mainstream-media-and-politicians/

You Are Being Lied to About Gaza Solidarity Camps by University Presidents, Mainstream Media, and Politicians

What Steven W. Thrasher Saw on College Campuses

by Steven W. Thrasher
May 10, 2024
Literary Hub

Saturday was a gloriously beautiful spring day in Chicago, and as I wandered into the “Liberation Zone” which has taken over DePaul University’s quad, a kind lady asked me if I would like some lunch.

I declined because I was headed to a BBQ in a couple of hours, but I took her up on some coffee, thanked her, and asked her if she was affiliated with the Vincentian Catholic university.

“No,” she told. “I’m just Palestinian.”

I recognized her from previous visits to that particular Gaza Solidarity Encampment, one of four I have visited over the last few weeks: Columbia University’s (where, as a PhD student at NYU, I once took some classes), Northwestern University’s (where I am on the faculty and am a member of Educators for Justice in Palestine), and the University of Chicago’s (where, like at DePaul, I was there to observe and to offer faculty de-escalation support if needed). The lady had been at DePaul every day, serving free food (often donated by Palestinian restaurants) to hundreds of people.

She, like everyone there that day, was extremely welcoming.

Over the previous few days, I had gone to bed or woken up to dark, war-like scenes of unspeakable violence waged by police and state troopers who were often wielding machine guns, lobbing chemical weapons, and shooting rubber-coated bullets (and at least one naked bullet which was not coated in rubber). Though some of the police raids happened in daylight, most have happened at night, with projectile-gun blasts and flash bangs lighting up sinister spectacles of utter chaos.

Those scenes were such a contrast to DePaul’s Liberation Zone, which was almost placid on Saturday. Pivoting from the kind woman offering lunch, I saw a local musician teaching a group of students how to drum quietly on plastic Home Depot buckets. At the art tent, people were making signs. Many students were sprawled out on the grass, lazily enjoying the sun while reading books, writing, drawing, or debating politics. This seemed to be not only exactly what college life should be—judging from the official DePaul sign on the student center saying “Here, we hang out with a purpose”—it looked like what this university in particular desired.

The only violence came from Zionist counter protesters and, to a much larger degree, the police.

Indeed, at all four camps where I have spent time, I have been blown away by the light, the grass, the sky, the spirit of generosity, the easy temporal nature of camping with friends, the camaraderie, and—for the modern American university—the surprisingly religious spirit (drawn from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Native American traditions). These encampments were not always calm—sometimes they could be quite lively—yet they were among the most dynamic, electric, alive and pedagogical spaces I have ever seen.

 

Between salah and shabbat prayers, students at Columbia’s encampment listen to a speaker at sunset. April 19. All photos by the author.

But violent? The only violence came from Zionist counter protesters and, to a much larger degree, the police. The cops are the chaos agents which make these lovely, often gentle spaces into brutal hellscapes.

Feeling the gentle breeze and the sun on my skin as I floated around DePaul’s camp, I thought about how lucky I am to travel between these sights.

But to those of you who haven’t been able to get to a camp, I say: You are being lied to about these spaces—by most reporters, by most politicians, and (with extremely few exceptions), especially by university presidents.

*

One of the lies you have been told the most is that these encampments are antisemitic. It’s scurrilously perpetuated by journalists like CNN’s Jake Tapper, who are “reporting” from WhatsApp group chats, as well as by politicians, from Republican Speaker Mike Johson to President Biden.

I visited Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity encampment on Friday April 19, a day after the first police raid arrested 113 people and a new set of tents took over the southwest corner of the quad. One of the first things I saw made it apparent to me that early reports of religious strife were just moral panic. A group of Muslim students were kneeling in prayer and, in a scene I have since seen recreated at different camps, a group of students—many Jewish— held a tarp up around them to give them privacy. (Later that evening, Jewish students hosted a seder on the lawn.)

 

The view from inside Columbia’s encampment, looking towards Low Library, April 19.

I also observed a group of speakers address the camp, including a Palestinian American nurse who had recently returned from a shift in Gaza, a white woman who had been arrested in that same spot in 1968 and, most controversially, Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein is an uncontested expert on Gaza, but he is on the wrong side of some social issues for many students and he does not like the phrase “from the river to the sea.”


And yet, in a scene that should have made contrarian “free speech” diehard contrarians happy, the students listened to all the speakers respectfully. Even when Finkelstein welcomed criticism, it was given, and received, respectfully. (And when he left the lawn and the students chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” he laughed with good nature.)

What I witnessed at Columbia is what I have seen at all the encampments (and, similarly, in years prior, at Occupy Wall Street at Black Lives Matter encampments): students experimenting with making a society better than the shit one they’re expected to accept, enter and recreate. They were experimenting with self governance and horizontal organizing. They were experimenting with educating, entertaining, feeding, defending and (quite unusual at elite universities) praying for and with one another. They were figuring out their values, and putting real effort into trying to do what’s right. How beautiful is that?

Students and elders were sharing their religious traditions and experiences, in a common cause of love and justice to combat American empire.

University administrators want to control every single aspect of students’ social lives, such that they can only produce a limited, finite set of outcomes: one where students will not question the ruling class, but will only socialize in ways that reproduce the social order, and only socialize in ways which maximize profits for the ruling class and uphold the aims of American empire.

Stray from that and you will be destroyed.

And that’s why you are being lied to about these encampments.

On April 30, the following Thursday, a few dozen Northwestern University students declared Deering Meadow to be a Liberated Zone. (It was a fitting location, given the lawn was dedicated to the six student protesters killed in 1970 at Kent State and Jackson State Universities.)

As a member of the group Educators for Justice in Palestine, I signed up as a faculty supporter. We made sure there were always at least four faculty on site with the students, to liaison with police, talk to administration or—given the horrific beatings we had seen the day before at the University of Texas Austin and University of Southern California—to physically intervene if needed.

I was on the first shift when the camp began. It was a bit chilly, but it was a totally serene scene and a beautiful morning—bucolic, even. Students were putting up tents, preparing to serve food and laying out literature which represented their hopes and dreams for stoping the genocide and making a better world. I could hear birds chirping. I saw a bunny.

 

Students relaxing on the first day of Northwestern’s encampment, shortly after the police retreated, April 25.

But then a helicopter buzzed in and, unlike at any other university which I have seen, Northwestern’s police showed up immediately. Within minutes, they threatened to arrest our students.

My colleagues and I hastily formed a faculty defense line, arm-in-arm. The police moved in, pushing, kicking and beating us. A man who identified himself as Northwestern’s Chief of Police (and who is also a “Senior Associate Vice President of Safety & Security”) attacked me personally. It was a harrowing and physically painful experience (and I developed a pain in my right hip still bothering me two weeks later.)

I was deeply touched as matzoh was passed around and folks wearing yarmulkes and hijabs alike literally broke bread with one another.

But, after being jostled around for some time, we prevailed. We held the line, we kept the police from hurting our students, and the cops retreated (to great applause). The camp was born and, for the next five days, Northwestern’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment turned our campus into a welcoming space for students, faculty and neighbors.

 

A sign on a student’s tent at Northwestern University, May 26.

And like all acts of camping, the Liberation Zone allowed people to have a different relationship to time, nature, and to each other.

The life of the camp coincided with the Jewish Passover holidays, and the lie of antisemitism was powerfully burst at every sundown. Each evening would begin with a Passover Seder, as Jewish members of the community lit candles, shared the story of Pesach, explained the foods, and shared the prayers. I have never been more proud of a former student then when one of mine got up on the mic, explained what her Jewish faith meant to her, and spoke passionately about how the lesson of the holiday mean that “never again” meant never again for anyone—in Gaza, Congo, Sudan, America, or anywhere.

I was deeply touched as matzoh was passed around and folks wearing yarmulkes and hijabs alike literally broke bread with one another.

On Friday night, with hundreds of people in attendance dressed in keffiyehs, the encampment’s Jewish community taught everyone to sing the Hebrew song of gratitude “Dayenu.” As a Christian, I had learned this song some 20 years ago at my first seder. But in the secular setting of our university, hearing hundreds of people singing Da-ay-enu, da-ay-enu, day-ey-enu, dayenu dayenu together—as Jews, Muslims, Christian, Hindus, people of Native American faiths and no religious faith at all—was one of the most special moments of my life.

That same evening Bethy Massey, an elder who had been at the Columbia protests in 1968, addressed the crowd. Despite her soft voice and pronounced tremor, hundreds of young people listened in rapt attention.

 

Northwestern students gathered for Friday Shabbat prayers and community talks, April 26.

This sharing of the Passover meal and intergenerational communion were not, of course, antisemitic—just as the issue of colonial domination in Israel is not about Judaism, or even about religion. These students and elders were sharing their religious traditions and experiences, in a common cause of love and justice to combat American empire.

And that’s why you are being lied to about the nature of these camps, by presidents of universities and of the United States alike.

*

A lie from journalists is that these protesters’ demands aren’t clear, and that the camps are impossible to report on.

On Tuesday, media critic Brian Stelter tweeted this quote from an article by Jill Filipovic: “Despite all the coverage of the protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, it can be remarkably difficult to understand what the players are actually saying.” The article is titled “Say Plainly What the Protesters Want” and Filipovic was not done any favors by Stelter or whoever wrote her headline.

Though I still do not agree with her on much in it, the article is not as flat as the former CNN media critic or the Atlantic headline writer make it out to be. Still, Filipovic begins her essay with the line Stelter highlighted, and its faulty premise: that where protesters stand is confusing. (She herself later writes “the protests—both on college campuses and those led by broader, non campus groups—have articulated demands and ideologies. News outlets have a responsibility to report what those are, and are largely failing.”)

It is extremely easy to see what the students want: the website Students 4 Gaza lists a map of every school encampment (183 as of this writing) and links to each one’s demands. What exactly they want is very articulate, well reasoned, and is as easy to comprehend as signs or chants that say Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!

 

The painted “Community Guidelines” of the DePaul Liberated Zone. Students would recite them whenever sessions were held on microphones and ask everyone to agree to them if they were going to be in the encampment, May 1.

But too many journalists perform a particular kind of false, learned helplessness about Palestine, acting like “It’s just too complicated!” when it is not.

No example of this in the past week has been more glaring than Peggy Noonan’s. As she infamously wrote in the Wall Street Journal, she went to the encampment at Columbia before it was shut down for a second time:

I was on a bench taking notes as a group of young women, all in sun-glasses, masks and keffiyehs, walked by. “Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think,” I called. They marched past, not making eye contact, save one, a beautiful girl of about 20. “I’m not trained,” she said. Which is what they’re instructed to say to corporate media representatives who will twist your words. “I’m barely trained, you’re safe,” I called, and she laughed, and half-halted. But her friends gave her a look and she conformed.

It’s not hard to hear what the students are saying, even if they don’t give you an exclusive scoop. Journalists could just go to a camp…

To her credit, unlike many journalists, Noonan actually went to an encampment before writing about it. But she misrepresented herself (she is not “barely trained” as a journalist), she insulted her would-be sources in the pages of her paper because they declined to talk to her, and she barely tried to listen to them.

Did she try 10 more students?
Did she go to the media table or tent and ask to speak to a student representative?
Did she in any way make herself a helpful member of the community?

More fundamentally, has she lived her life in such a way that an activist upset with the state of the world would want to talk to her? I am guessing the one-time Ronald Reagan speech writer has not. (And, my reading of her career is that she engages in transactional journalism, while many people at the encampments believe in relational journalism.)

 

A statue on DePaul’s campus of St. Louise who was co-founder, with Saint Vincent de Paul, of the Daughters of Charity. She has been draped with a keffiyeh, May 1.

I have never had trouble talking to anyone in any encampment. When I went to Columbia’s, I saw a young Black woman de-escalate a situation with two Zionist students, who were beginning to taunt Muslim students as they prayed. She de-escalated them so deftly, the Zionist students walked away not seemingly out of anger or frustration, but from an acceptance to not bother their fellow students.

When I congratulated her on how well she’d done, we started chatting. Without my asking, she invited me onto the main lawn, which was only for students or their invited guests, and told her peers I was fine to join them.

I hadn’t barked “tell me what you think” at her, nor was I even trying to get closer to the action; the invitation just came organically as we spoke.

Similarly, I visited DePaul last Sunday morning, and the scene was not as relaxed as it had been the day before. Rather, hundreds of students were defending the camp and heatedly facing off a counter demonstration of Zionists. Yet when I walked up to them and asked if I could step inside past their locked arms, I was immediately ushered in. (I later stepped back out when it became clear I needed to pitch in as faculty to help de-escalate the tension and be a police liaison.)

 

A sign on a student’s tent at Northwestern University, May 26

New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker did Noonan no favors when he quoted Noonan’s lines above on Twitter, adding, “When protests are not about actually explaining your cause or trying to engage journalists who are there to listen.”

But is Noonan listening to students? Are Baker, Filipovic, Stelter or Tapper? Local journalists are—consider this week’s viral video from the local Fox affiliate TV station with the brilliant University of Chicago student as they fended off police, or this, of a student representative speaking at the Oxford encampment—but are any national journalists listening? It’s not hard to hear what the students are saying, even if they don’t give you an exclusive scoop. Journalists could just go to a camp, talk to the official reps, read the community guidelines, or even just look and listen to the signs around them—like the one made by the student which listed their 200 family members who have been killed in Gaza.

In these contemplative, dynamic spaces, it is not hard to hear what the students are expressing—and sometimes, those expressions are loving and profound.

For instance, the first time I went to the University of Chicago’s encampment in the daytime, I noticed the medics were working out of the Dr. Hammam Alloh Medic Tent. I recognized the name but couldn’t place it from memory, and looked him up.

Dr. Alloh was a sole nephrologist in Gaza, worked at Al Shifa hospital, and refused to leave his patients. As he told Amy Goodman on October 31 last year, even though he and his colleagues were “being exterminated,” he said, “If I go, who treats my patients? You think I went to medical school for 14 years so I can only think about my life and not my patients?

“This is not the reason I became a doctor.”

Less than two weeks later, he was killed by US-backed Israel. He was only 36.

Without even having to talk to anyone at the UChicago camp, I heard what they were about, and what they were saying. Theirs was a message of love, of kindness. Quietly, gently, but in word and deed, they were recovering Dr. Alloh’s spirit of generosity and bringing it back to life—as the students are doing with their Refaat Alareer libraries.

Anyone visiting the camps can see and hear these messages. They are everywhere.

Anyone not hearing and reporting them is lying to you.

*

On Tuesday, my good friend Prof. Eman Abdelhadi, a professor at the University of Chicago, traveled to her students’ camp after midnight. There were credible reports from reliable media sources that a raid was imminent. Prof. Abdelhadi cares deeply for her students, and stayed with them until around dawn, when fear of the raid seemed over.

But, shortly after she and legal observers left, the university’s own police force moved in and raided the camp. Just back home, Prof. Abdelhad returned to campus again.

 

University of Chicago Police in riot gear standing between the campus Gaza Solidarity Encampment and Zionist counter-protesters, May 3.

Sharing an email about her university’s “cleanup” of the quad (which terrorized sleeping students and violently destroyed their property), she wrote: “By cleanup they mean destroying the only real community space that’s existed on this campus.”

The shared goals of these encampments—to divest from an apartheid state and end the genocide in Gaza—are not anything to be ashamed about.

“For many of us,” she continued, “these past 8 days were a glimpse into a different kind of life. One where we are truly connected to each other, where we share space as human beings not just as positions (student, professor, etc). That feeling is bigger than a tent, and it will guide us forward.”

This hit me hard. In the five days of my university’s camp, I met more students and faculty (especially people of color) than I had in the previous five years. Outside of my classroom, the Liberation Zone marked the only five days I have felt welcomed or connected to people anywhere on my campus.

I’ve also met more caring, compassionate colleagues at their camps than in any other venue over my years in Chicago. The shared goals of these encampments—to divest from an apartheid state and end the genocide in Gaza—are not anything to be ashamed about. They are moral and righteous desires. Nor are these fringe positions; they are desired by the majority of the people on this planet.

In the four encampments I have visited, it has felt so good to not have to pretend—as so many universities, publications and politicians seem to want us to—that everything is fine and we must just get back to normal by pretending what is happening isn’t happening. Everyone knows police could come in at any second and beat the shit out of them; but they know what’s happening in Gaza is far worse, and so they’re willing to take the risk.

As a professor, it has felt good to pick up trash with my students, and to learn about how to roll a keffiyeh or sing Pesach songs with them. For all four encampments I visited erased a lot of divisions: between young students and old teachers; between faculty and staff; between Jews, Muslims and Christians; between formal members of a university community and our neighbors; between students of different universities (and their peers who don’t go to college).

Like the the Poor People’s Campaign Martin Luther King was planning when he was killed in 1968 (which was supposed to be a shanty town encampment of white, Black and Chicano poor people on the National Mall) the Gaza solidarity encampments have been a taste of what might be possible when everyone freely gets what they need—and when people unite across divisions to share shabbat, salah, and a demand to end war.

And that’s why, so often, you are being lied to about them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Steven W. Thrasher

 

Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, CPT, a journalist, social epidemiologist, and cultural critic, holds the Daniel Renberg chair at the Medill School of Journalism, and is on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. A former writer for the Village Voice, Scientific American and the Guardian, Thrasher is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. [Photo by C.S. Muncy]

Democracy Now!

May 24, 2024

 

Prof. Steven Thrasher: You Are Being Lied to About Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus

VIDEO:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaEVsnutDZY"

 

The presidents of UCLA, Northwestern and Rutgers universities were questioned Thursday on Capitol Hill about pro-Palestine protests on campus Thursday, the fourth time in six months that the Republican-led House Education Committee has summoned school leaders to Washington over accusations of antisemitism. Lawmakers reserved their heaviest questioning for the presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers, where Gaza solidarity encampments were voluntarily dismantled after students negotiated deals with university administrators. 

 

Northwestern journalism professor Steven Thrasher, who has been an outspoken supporter of the Gaza solidarity encampments at his school and elsewhere, was singled out during the hearing and described as a “goon,” but he tells Democracy Now! he is undeterred in both his pro-Palestine advocacy and defense of his students. “It’s supposed to scare everybody who supports Gaza. It’s supposed to scare everybody who’s against the genocide. It’s supposed to scare students who are righteously standing up against the killing that’s happening,” says Thrasher.

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Transcript: 

 

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/2...

 
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