Thousands of antiracist students at Columbia University (CU) have taken a bold stance against the genocide in Gaza, staging an ongoing, five-day-plus protest on the campus’s lawn 24 hours a day.The killer KKKops have repeatedly attacked an encampment the students set up and arrested over 100 students. The NYPD is acting at the command of the racist, Zionist-loving bosses, led by CU President Nemat Shafik and the U.S. Congress.
Workers and students from around New York City have rallied outside the campus in support of the protest. Despite the arrests and other attacks, these bold students are staying the course and providing a powerful example to the working class worldwide of how to fight back and what winning looks like. When we resolve to not stop fighting the bosses, we are on the path to a communist world free from Zionism, other forms of racism/nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends moved quickly to support the students and join the protests around CU. We brought supplies like blankets and towels for students sleeping on the lawn in the cold. We distributed countless newspapers, fliers, and chant sheets. We infused the students’ strong, but nationalist calls for a “Free Palestine” with chants of, “To free Palestine, fight for communism, now’s the time” and “Asian, Latin, Black, and white, workers of the world unite!” We commend the leadership of students fighting back while also calling for a plan to destroy capitalism (beyond divesting in only the most despicable racist capitalists).
The student-led fight back is inspiring students and workers at other colleges – even as many such institutions are breeding grounds for the bosses’ racist ideas and members. Solidarity encampments sprung up at Yale and Harvard. Students at the New School launched a solidarity strike after the CU protest began. Students from the City University of New York (CUNY) led a march from nearby campuses to CU.
History of Fightback at Columbia
Columbia University’s history is steeped in gutter racism and service to U.S. imperialism. “Of the ten men who served as presidents of King’s and Columbia between 1754 and the end of the Civil War, at least half owned slaves at one point in their lives” (Washington Post, 1/24/17). Scientists at Columbia also assisted with the Manhattan Project, where U.S. bosses rushed to create atomic weapons used to massacre workers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union (New York Times, 10/30/07).
But along with that history, comes a tradition of fightback against it. After a Students for a Democratic Society (which PLP was once very active in) member exposed the university’s ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a fascist weapons think tank affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), during the 1960s, students in SDS began an anti-war campaign on campus (Columbia University Libraries).
In 1968, Black students occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, in response to the college’s IDA ties and a racist plan to create a gymnasium in Morningside Park that would restrict use for Black workers in Harlem. Only 12 percent of the gym would be open to the public (History.com, 7/7/20). Despite the college’s multiple efforts to quash the struggle, the students were ultimately successful in getting the campus bosses to drop their affiliation with the DOD and the gym proposal altogether.
In more recent years, Columbia’s grossly underpaid graduate student workers have held strikes against the college for better wages (New York Times, 11/24/21). Students have also been active against Columbia’s racist real estate expansion and privatization of public land in Harlem, which has caused mass displacement of Black and Latin workers since the 1940s. (planners network.org, 10/14/09).
No free speech against genocide
As U.S. imperialism backs the mass slaughter of our Palestinian brothers and sisters overseas and tells workers any anti-Israel sentiment is “anti-Semitic,” we see clearly that “free speech” on campus is tuned to which ideas favor the bosses. In the days since the encampment began, capitalist media and stooge politicians have united in denouncing the students as hostile to Jewish workers, pushing the lie that Zionism and Judaism are inherently linked (USA Today, 4/22). Yet of course, none of these clowns have had anything as forceful to say about the scores of workers and children in Palestine being killed daily by Israel. Or the Zionist trolls who have been walking through CU taunting the students by wearing the Israeli flag as a cape.
Liberal “nonviolence” is a farce
As of this writing, CU has switched its classes to online only in response to the encampment, restricting who can access the campus and adding more security guards (NBCNews, 4/22). Fascism is palpable in the air, and even though the encampment has been non-violent, the bosses’ violent response proves the pacifism they preach to workers does nothing.
Multiracial students leading the way
PLP will continue to be active in CU’s demonstrations. We are holding discussions with the student organizers and hope to invite some to May Day on May 4th. Their rage at this system, when united with communist ideas and leadership, will guarantee the bosses’ days are numbered, and we will all run society for the better without them. Dare to struggle, dare to win!
