‘Are we in police state?’ Progressives on curbs on campus protests

Progressive members of the US Congress have demanded an end to nationwide police attacks on pro-Palestinian campus protests following violent raids and mass arrests at universities across the country, from Columbia in New York City to the University of South Florida in Tampa.

“The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor [Eric] Adams is abhorrent and barbarous,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) wrote on social media. “The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end.”

More than 300 demonstrators were arrested at Columbia and the nearby City College of New York late Tuesday alone, bringing the total number of arrests at dozens of universities across the U.S. to more than 1,000. In a statement, Bush said she was “appalled” by the police response to demonstrations at Washington University in St. Louis, which is in the Missouri Democrat’s district.

Bush is part of a growing chorus of progressive lawmakers, advocacy organizations, and human rights experts condemning US universities for setting police officers on nonviolent demonstrators who are pushing their schools to divest from companies profiting off Israel’s war on Gaza and criticizing the Biden administration’s continued support for the Netanyahu government.

Like many on Capitol Hill and across corporate media, President Joe Biden has attempted to cast the protests as “antisemitic,” giving tacit support to efforts to disband them and prompting warnings that the White House is further alienating young voters. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said: “Student protests against injustice are not new. From Birmingham to Kent to Soweto, we’ve seen the devastating results of excessive police force. History has sided with the students every time. Political and university ‘leaders’ should know better than to repeat condemned history.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said that “the use of city police to dismantle peaceful protests on college campuses in the United States, coupled with proposed legislation to punish Americans for criticizing Israel, is a dangerous assault on our democracy and a sign of the very creeping authoritarianism infecting so much of the world.”

In a floor speech on Wednesday, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)—a longtime educator and former school principal—said that in the past he’s had guns pulled on him “multiple times by law enforcement simply for being a Black man in America.” “Now I see guns being drawn on peaceful protesters at Columbia University,” said Bowman. “Are we in a police state, or is this a democracy?” the New York Democrat asked. “We must stand with our young people and demand justice and freedom for Palestinians and everyone in this world.”

The outspoken progressive support for the student protesters comes as police crackdowns continued on campuses across the country, with dozens more students arrested Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Georgia, and other schools.

Responding to police repression at Florida universities, ACLU of Florida interim executive director Howard Simon said Wednesday that “cracking down on peaceful protestors is likely to escalate—not calm—the tensions on campus, as events of the past week have made abundantly clear.”

“Threatening students with expulsion from their university or deportation from the country does not align with the obligations of public officials to respect First Amendment rights regardless of the point of view that is being expressed,” said Simon. “Universities are meant to be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators and politicians squash political discourse they don’t approve of with threats, arrests, rubber bullets, and tear gas.” https://www.commondreams.org/