Opinion: 1 year after the encampments
With ICE conducting arrests of student activists from universities across the country, I have been reflecting on the encampments for Palestine that occurred on our very own campus just one year ago and asking myself have people just moved on?
It feels unreal to me, waking up every morning to a new headline, reading about how marginalized communities around the world are continually being targeted by racist heteropatriarchal systems of power, yet having to go on about my day to day life as a student.
How can we be expected to keep it pushing when our world is seemingly falling apart in front of us? It has now been 561 days of an ongoing genocide in Palestine, yet with time passing by, I have seen less and less people speaking out.
I am in my final semester here at Humboldt and as I walk around our campus now, I constantly see reminders of past events. No matter how many shabby cover up paint jobs it takes, I will never unsee the messages calling for a “Free Gaza” marked over walls everywhere.
Only one year ago, April 22, 2024 marked the first night where student activists began their occupation of Siemens Hall. I vividly remember having seen the first wave of social media posts, seeing that people had barricaded themselves inside, with an alarming number of law enforcement officers already on the scene. Fear and adrenaline fueled me as I rushed to campus that evening, trying to figure out what we could do to show our support to those students inside and outside. I knew that no matter what, we were not going to leave until the police officers were gone.
It was terrifying hearing reports that there had been calls for police backup all the way from Redding. Although I couldn’t be too shocked knowing that the administration was behind these efforts, after all they have always fallen short when it comes to protecting students of color (may I remind you all of the housing crisis).
While some may have seen the campus closures as an excuse to slack off on their finals, the reality is that for most people it was a time to come together to show our solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The way in which students and community members rallied together to help start up first aid, mutual aid and food tents the following days demonstrated the resilient spirit embodied by collective demonstration.
As a critical race, gender and sexuality studies major, I have spent a lot of time in my Ethnic Studies classes engaging in discussions about how settler colonialism operates and how we can do the work to dismantle white supremacy. To then see that knowledge taken out of a classroom space and put into practice during the encampments was next level.
Yet there is a part of me that can’t help but feel that some aspects of the actions taken last year were superficial. While I in no way want to take away from the overall impact that the encampments had, I do want to acknowledge that as a student of color it felt like the main focus slowly became distorted as time went on. At some point it was as if people were only there to enact a somewhat dystopian resistance fantasy. Ultimately I believe it comes down to our positionality and not losing sight of the reasons we are choosing to engage in these political demonstrations in the first place. If you feel that I’m being harsh maybe take that as a sign to do some inner reflection about the space that you’re occupying.
In this day and age of social media where people often just post to make themselves look good for their followers, treating activism as a trend, it is necessary to acknowledge that there have been those who have kept the momentum going, working everyday to call for a liberated Palestine.
Despite efforts to limit student advocacy across the nation made by the current president or even our own administration, we will continue our fight for a decolonial future. Students united will never be divided. And if it hasn’t been clear enough FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA.
* This only reflects the opinion of the author, not of the newspaper as a whole.
