Activist Groups Trained Students For Months Before Their Pro-Palestine Protests
Activist groups trained students for months before their pro-Palestine protests. The wave of protests across America came suddenly. But the political tactics underlying some of the demonstrations were a result of months of training and planning by longtime activists and left-wing groups.
Student organizers held consultations with groups such as the anti-Israel National Students for Justice in Palestine, and veterans of previous campus protests and former Black Panthers. Some chapters of Students for Justice for Palestine have been banned from university campuses for policy violations in the months since war erupted with Hamas’s October 7 massacre. This includes the SJP chapter at Columbia University in New York, the epicenter of the anti-Israel protests.
Students researched past protests over Columbia’s expansion into Harlem and went to a community meeting on gentrification and development. They attended a “teach-in” put on by several former Black Panthers. “We took noted from our elders, engaged in dialogue with them, and analyzed how the university responded to previous protests,” said Suella Polat, a graduate student and organizer in the pro-Palestinian encampment.
This revelation comes in the backdrop of chaos, violence, and arrests made in connection with these protests on American college campuses. While student protestors have denied that outside forces played a role in shaping these protests, it is clear that they did.
The aim of these protests were to make universities to divest from Israel. While Brown University agreed to hold a vote on whether to divest from Israel, most universities, including Columbia, the epicenter of it all, have said that they would not divest.
Activist groups trained students for months before their pro-Palestine protests. How successful were they in achieving their goals? It seems that they were not very successful. But they are unlikely to stop or give up.
