Endorsed by:
Columbia University Apartheid Divest
Student Workers of Columbia
SftP-NYC
On January 21, over 100+ students from Columbia University walked out their first day of class in defiance of the brutal repression of pro-Palestine students. Over 40 students are facing disciplinary hearings for resisting their university’s direct financing and support for the genocidal, zionist entity responsible for the massacre of over 320,000 Palestinians.[1]
Alongside faculty and community members, the students marched uptown to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church for a teach-in entitled, “Science Under Occupation: Resistance in the Imperial Core and Beyond.” The teach-in would center the work and experiences of Palestinian scientists and highlight academia’s direct contributions to the occupation and genocide (i.e., research funding, academic collaborations) and discuss ways to collectively resist from within the imperial core. Shattering the illusion of “elite” universities, this would have been a liberatory space for knowledge production, by the people and for the people.
Our gathering alone was enough to prompt heavy repression by the NYPD who barricaded the entire block surrounding the church under the guise of “security concerns.” Church leadership and community members who tried to liaise were told that the gatherers “broke the law” for marching on the street, and police refused to allow anyone inside the barricades without giving any legally-valid reason. Despite the Rector of St. Mary’s attempting to confer with the commanding officer, the NYPD did not leave their posts at the barricades surrounding the church for over 2 hours. The NYPD’s unreasonable and unnecessary display of force denied access to everyone. This included unhoused people, some of whom were seeking refuge in the church from freezing 15 °F temperatures and others already sheltering on the premises who feared leaving due to heavy police presence outside the church.
This blatant display of police aggression and violence is clearly a form of collective punishment directed towards all members of the Harlem community. Misrepresenting the “law” to justify the besiegement of a people’s sanctuary is a violation of our first amendment right to assembly and expression, as well as our community members’ NYC-protected right to shelter. The powerful, intertwined forces of repression and occupation will use any excuse to suppress our movement. Yet they forget that, from New York to Palestine and beyond, repression always breeds resistance. The NYPD’s cowardly act of intimidation only strengthens our resolve to keep fighting for Palestinian liberation and police state abolition. Under intensifying fascism, it is imperative that we break down false barriers siloing our movements. Our collective strength strikes fear in the oppressor, and only collectively, rooted in solidarity and nourished by community, will we survive and build the liberated world in which we all deserve to live.
We will not stop, we will not rest. Brick by brick, we will tear down this empire and its imperialist project from the belly of the beast. The Popular University for Palestine WILL LIVE.
Towards liberation. Free Palestine!
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[1] This number was calculated based on the most recent Lancet estimate, scaled to the previously published ratio. See: Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf, “Counting the dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential”, The Lancet 404, no. 10449 (July 2024): 237–238, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01169-3; Zeina Jamaluddine et al., “Traumatic Injury Mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: A Capture–Recapture Analysis,” The Lancet (In Press, January 2025), https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)02678-3.