If not now

The removal of student encampments should be opposed by anyone concerned about our future. The use of violence against them is unconscionable. University presidents who called police on to a campuses should be the ones removed.

The world is shifting rapidly, and most presidents are on the wrong side of history.

Across the globe, energized by the courage of students, people are surging against corporate states that have deemed human life disposable.  Sophisticated understandings emerging from these protests are providing a critical perspective on the interconnectedness of racialized capital, settler colonialism, military force, and the degradation of people and the planet. The encampments are providing new political spaces as students experiment with ways of living and being together that reflect intentional values of care and intellectual curiosity.

In a recent article exploring how campus protests are fighting both militarism and corporatization, Henry Giroux writes:

The long-simmering crisis over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians has reached a breaking point. Campus protests in solidarity with Gaza have erupted across North America, spanning at least 45 U.S. states, Canada and Mexico. Similar demonstrations have surged across Europe, including in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Additionally, expressions of moral outrage and solidarity have erupted in Central and South American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Cuba, as well as in Asia (including India, Indonesia and Japan), the Middle East (including Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon and Yemen), Africa (including South Africa and Tunisia), Australia, New Zealand, and beyond. Many faculty have protested alongside their students, and on May 8 a group of professors at The New School in New York City erected the U.S.’s first faculty encampment in solidarity with Gaza, signaling the growing momentum of the movement.

Meanwhile “Hands Off Rafah” rallies have drawn thousands into the streets.

This campus eruption is being met not only with physical violence but with an ideological assault on the rights of free speech and public protest.  Sometimes this takes the form of ridicule of those engaged in protest, but increasingly those organizing for peace are being labeled counterproductive agitators, antisemitic, or terrorists. 

University officials and the pundits in the pockets of the wealthy claim they are in favor of free speech, just not “disruption.” Their justification for the use of force is what they call the “time, place and manner” restriction. In a recent NPR interview David French of the NY Times, advocated for these restrictions explaining that they give everyone “equal access to the campus but mean that protests “don’t disrupt the actual educational process of the school.”

The point of protest, of course, is to disrupt. It is to attract attention. To encourage people to stop moving about daily life in less than conscious ways. 

This argument for regulating protest is nothing more than the refinement of ideas that have long been used to criminalize those who criticize authority and challenge injustice. 

A recent article by John Pfaff documents the growing trend at the state level to expand this idea of circumscribing the behavior of people to those who would document police violence. In Florida, for example, a new bill makes it a misdemeanor to stand within 25 feet of a police officer if you are told to move, if the officer thinks you are interfering with them, threatening physical harm, or otherwise harassing them.  According to this new law, harassment is defined as creating emotional distress for the officer. And the officer apparently gets to define when that stress occurs. As Pfaff says:

 One Florida House Democrat submitted a sarcastic amendment to rename SB 184 “The I Don’t Want the World to See the Police Kill an Unarmed Innocent Man Like George Floyd Again, So I Want To Protect Bad Cops and Violate Free Speech Act.”

Supporting public actions that force us to engage with issues is essential to a living democracy. The communists and socialists of the past had a different way of thinking about “time place and manner.” They asked, “If not now, when? If not here, where? If not me, who?