Since October, university students have been escalating campaigns for divestment from genocide, many culminating with encampments springing up nationwide
by Aron Ali-McClory, National Co-Chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America
“Intifada, Intifada — Globalize the Intifada!” is a chant which has been heard across the country since October, when student protestors first rose up across the country to demand an end to the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, part of the broader Nakba (lit. The Catastrophe) which has been perpetrated against Palestinians since 1948. While the chant might be alienating to many, the word originated in the Palestinian context to describe mass student protests in the early 1990s, while in the Arabic language the word intifada (lit. shaking off) it used simply to describe resistance against oppression.
Why is this significant? Because increasingly, Palestinian-led groups are describing the recent wave of campus uprisings as an extension of their global resistance, referring to the U.S. protests as the ‘student intifada’. Only in one instance before — the divestment movement against South Africa in the 1980s — has the student movement in the heart of empire been so deeply connected to decolonial struggle far beyond our borders.
Significant questions face our movement, though: how do we move forward, and how do we continue to escalate to win divestment from Israeli genocide? To begin to answer these questions, it is critical to understand the context of these protests and how campuses can regroup to build strong campaigns for disclosure and divestment.The over 100 long-term encampments and countless more direct actions that sprung up in late April did not come out of nowhere. Escalating campaigns at Columbia, Brown, and Yale — among many other primarily private universities — had been started even before Oct. 7 with coalitions like CUAD (Columbia University Apartheid Divest) and Brown Divest! staging increasingly escalatory actions on their campuses, demonstrating a tactical use of skills commonly used in the labor movement to identify and develop organic leaders while continuing to apply pressure to specific targets. While for many campuses, encampments rose spontaneously in response to calls to action or solidarity, at these few universities who started the great wave across the country, camping was simply just the next logical step in their plans for escalation.
This kind of aggressive and nonviolent escalation is directly carrying forth the legacy of not just the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, but also the Palestinian Intifada itself.
As a national leader of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), I oversaw a robust operation that encompassed the scope of the national movement, with our national leadership and member-led communications committee providing almost 24/7 support to chapters and non-chapters alike who needed support with their encampment or direct action organizing. This experience allowed me to witness the power of collective action, of the student intifada, even where there weren’t sustained divestment campaigns prior to the formation of a divestment coalition or the decision to camp, the University of Florida included.
Among my other key takeaways from this top-down view are the importance of democracy and long-term strategic vision. Not all campuses are built equally, and organizing conditions are absolutely different from Florida to Ohio to California, and everywhere in between. However, despite these differences, many of these encampments have met the same fate: extreme police brutality, forcing protestors to strategically retreat and reassess next steps. Other encampments, those who do have robust democracies and long-term strategic vision, and happen to have the right organizing conditions, have been met with some victory, though. Brown University reached a deal with encampment organizers to vote on divestment in October, while the democratically elected team of student negotiators at San Francisco State University have negotiated with administration in a public square surrounded by principled observers, mimicking tactics of ‘open bargaining’ often seen throughout the class struggle wing of the labor movement.
The glimmers of hope we see from campuses at Brown and SFSU, as a result of their robust democracies and vision, is not the end-all-be-all for divestment organizing, of course. Recognizing the chance of brutal police oppression and deciding to take concessions while regrouping to apply pressure to achieve bigger demands is a specific political decision, and it’s not one that every campus has to choose. However, as the national movement to sustain the student intifada enters summer, and looks forward to the fall, campuses must think about how they maximize their material victories for Palestine.
Building power for Palestine was never going to be easy, but if there’s any generation to meet the moment, it is this generation of students agitating from the heart of empire to aid in the liberation of Palestine. With them, I stand on the right side of history, and look forward to the many divestment victories we will win together.