On Tuesday evening, twenty-four Columbia University students stood together in front of Hamilton Hall, which was occupied by students, as dusk descended. Among them was me.
With voices filled with emotion, we sang, “Your people are my people, your people are mine; your people are my people, our struggles align.” We formed a united group of activists from various beliefs, friends, and strangers, linking arms in solidarity with each other and with the brave students of the past. The tension in the air grew as the sounds of protests outside the university gates intensified – gates through which I had hurried moments before like a bat out of hell.
Despite knowing the risk of arrest for being on campus during the university’s shelter-in-place order, we made the choice to face the consequences.
As a human chain, draped in keffiyehs and trembling like leaves in the autumn breeze, we sang softly and took deep breaths as hundreds of NYPD officers, armed with flash grenades and pepper spray, marched towards us like a military procession.
Approaching us from different directions, they heard our frail voices singing, “This love that I have, the world didn’t give it to me; the world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away,” while threatening student journalists with arrest to limit coverage of their impending forceful actions.
Students in residence halls peered out windows and extended their iPhones to witness the looming confrontation.
As they closed in on us, grabbing us like puppets and slamming us onto the revered ground of bricks and concrete, we held on tighter to each other. Unlike puppets, we bleed, we fracture, we bruise, we feel.
Officers at Columbia exhibited anything but professionalism
After dispersing us, I raised my hands in a gesture of non-resistance and lack of arms. In return, police handled me roughly alongside other students being pushed down concrete stairs, callously instructing, “Watch your step.” We were arrested, restrained, and taken to 1 Police Plaza, where the NYPD had organized a celebration for the arresting officers.
They threw us into cells like animals – where the women’s toilet lacked privacy and their naked bodies were visible to numerous male officers.
Why are we protesting?College students are expressing their views on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Listen.
During a press conference hours later, New York Mayor Eric Adams claimed there were no violent incidents. This is a disgraceful lie. Subsequently, Columbia President Minouche Shafik expressed gratitude to the NYPD for their “professionalism” in an email to the entire university community on Wednesday. This alleged professionalism is also a falsehood.
How is it professional to forcefully grab a compliant 120-pound student with hands raised and slam her onto the ground? How is it professional to mistreat students? How is it professional to remove a woman’s hijab during processing and refuse to return it – yet provide me, a non-Muslim, with a vest due to the cold cell? How is it professional to expose women to male officers for toilet use because they “trespassed” on their own university?
As our bodies were seized, we sang, “Like a tree planted by the waters, we shall not be moved” – and we stood our ground.
Protesters are not antisemitic. We stand with innocent Gazans.
Our hearts go out to Gaza, our determination is stronger than ever, and we wish for the world to witness the police brutality towards peaceful protesters, instigated by our university president.
However, it is essential to understand that we are not the heroes of this narrative – the true heroes are those in Gaza; those who have suffered starvation, bombings, and loss of lives; those whose children have been victims of violence; and those who did not have the luxury of choosing arrest or offering themselves as sacrifices for public relations.
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We are not the villains – those are the perpetrators of violence, such as Minouche Shafik and the Board of Trustees who prefer violence and arrests over divestment from a nation engaged in genocide.
Last Saturday, I hosted a Passover Seder in my small Manhattan apartment for many close friends. Representing various beliefs, we shared a meal and commemorated Jewish liberation from oppression and an unjust system.
Yet on Tuesday, I found myself in shackles, arrested as part of the campus movement labeled “antisemitic” by some in the media. It is not about antisemitism.
Importantly, our Jewish colleagues are not the villains here. They are our companions, our kin, our comrades, and allies. Like us, they experience pain, fractures, bruises, emotions. The student organizers have not incited violence against our Jewish peers. Our aim is to stop the violence and genocide against our Palestinian counterparts.
I chose to risk arrest because – unlike many peers and friends – I am fortunate enough not to face deportation; the potential repercussions, including suspension, pale in comparison to the suffering endured by those we stand in solidarity with, those who have lost lives, endured starvation, and torment, victims of the complicity of Columbia University.
We are neither heroes nor villains – the blame lies with Columbia and the flawed system it perpetuates.
Allie Wong is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. She holds a Master of Arts in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, an M.A. in International Affairs from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and a bachelor’s degree in Human Rights, Peace, and Nonviolent Activism from New York University.
Source: www.usatoday.com