Students say they have lost trust and are in limbo after New York police raid to clear Gaza protests.

Police and private security throng every entrance but one. Steel barriers line the streets. Students pack up belongings in their cars and leave for home - classes are cancelled, and exam plans are up in the air.

Everywhere there is gloom, and uncertainty about what happens next at Columbia University.

Students told the BBC that the university’s decision to call in police to clear a Gaza protest late on Tuesday, leading to a raid on the occupied Hamilton Hall and hundreds of arrests, has left the college community shattered.

The university president, Nemat Shafik, said that it was with great regret that she ordered the police raid against students and others she said had infiltrated the protest. It would “take time to heal”, she added in a message in the operation’s aftermath.

For students of this prestigious school in Manhattan, New York, how long is unclear.

      • bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        52·
        6 months ago

        I struggle to think of a more authoritarian structure than the hierarchic state.

        Stateless areas, such as Rojava and the Zapatistas are a good example of a “government” that doesn’t crush student protests, but they really don’t have them in the first place, since their bottom up structure makes it such that the students can directly use political power to prevent shit like supporting genocidal ethnic states.

      • bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1564·
        6 months ago

        With police, an apparatus of the state.

        You have to work harder to come to that conclusion than just going “hey isn’t the police employed by the government?”

          • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
            744·
            6 months ago

            So you know and understand that the police force is controlled by the government, but still fail to connect the dots between that fact and them crushing the protests?

          • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
            231·
            6 months ago

            And why would the police comply with such a ridiculous request when they have more important things to do?

            • Juice@midwest.social
              17·
              6 months ago

              Under capitalism the main police function is to break strikes and to repress other forms of protest against the policies of the ruling class. Any civic usefulness other forms of police activity may have, like controlling traffic and summoning ambulances, is strictly incidental to the primary repressive function. Personal inclinations of individual cops do not alter this basic role of the police. All must comply with ruling-class dictates. As a result, police repression becomes one of the most naked forms through which capitalism subordinates human rights to the demands of private property. If the cops sometimes falter in their antisocial tasks, it is simply because they – like the guns they use – are subject to rust when not engaged in the deadly function for which they are primarily trained.
              No police organization is exactly the same day in and day out. Two essential factors determine its character at a given moment: the social climate in which the cops have been operating and the turnover of personnel within the force. An unseasoned cop may tend to be somewhat considerate of others in the performance of duty, especially while class relations are relatively peaceful. Even in such calm times, however, the necessary accommodation must be made to capitalist demands, including readiness to shoot anyone who tampers with private property. Otherwise the aspiring cop, if he is not kicked out of the force, will have little chance of rising beyond a beat in the sticks. By gradually weeding out misfits along these general lines, a police department can keep itself abreast of requirements during a more or less stable period in class relations.

              – Farrell Dobbs, Teamster Rebellion

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              53·
              6 months ago

              For the same reason they will comply with such request from any private party? Try to pitch a couple of tents on your neighbor’s front lawn with your friends to see if the police doesn’t get you moving when they get called.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        181·
        6 months ago

        They tear gassed students at my old public university. The way they’re being treated is ridiculous and completely out of line with previous protests.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          111·
          6 months ago

          There’s a fucking sniper at my old university. On the roof of the student union building where my friends and I used to go smoke weed. That’s a head trip.

        • djsoren19@yiffit.net
          4·
          6 months ago

          Both universities are gonna have a real fun time explaining themselves in court, because I guarantee they’ll see lawsuits over this. Private universities get a lot of leeway over what they allow, but public universities are bound by the First Amendment. Any who are violating the protestors rights are gonna get fucked six ways to Sunday.