All this protesting on the college campuses makes me think and remember of my youth back in the day when I was protesting the war in Vietnam (and may I say I am proud of these young people for standing up to be counted).
I remember the days of my youth…..
I’ve been spending the last several weeks trying to find out what’s really going on with the campus protests.
I’ve met with students at Berkeley, where I teach. I’ve visited with faculty at Columbia. I’ve spoken by phone with young people and professors at many other universities.
My conclusion: while protest movements are often ignited by many different things and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people – most of them women and children – in Gaza.
To interpret these protests as anything else – as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian – is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why.
Most of the students and faculty I’ve spoken with found Hamas’s attack on October 7 odious. They also find Israel’s current government morally bankrupt, in that its response to Hamas’s attack has been disproportionate.
Some protesters focus their anger on Israel, some on the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, some on Joe Biden for failing to stand up to Netanyahu, for giving Israel additional armaments, and for what they perceive as Biden’s patronizing response to the protests.
Like any protest movement, the actions have attracted a few on the fringe. I’ve heard scattered reports of antisemitism, although I haven’t witnessed or heard anything that might be interpreted as antisemitic. In fact, a significant number of the protesters are Jewish.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/05/police-crackdowns-war-protesters
Just as it was when I participated in protests…..the MSM focus not on the substance of the protests but rather the spectacle of protests.
Protest movements can look very different depending on where you stand, both literally and figuratively.
For protesters, demonstrations are usually the result of meticulous planning by advocacy groups and leaders aimed at getting a message out to a wider world or to specific institutional targets. To outside onlookers, however, protests can seem disorganized and disruptive, and it can be difficult to see the depth of the effort or their aims.
Take the pro-Palestinian protests that have sprung up at campuses across the United States in recent weeks. To the students taking part they are, in the words of one protester, “uplifting the voices of Gazans, of Palestinians facing genocide.” But to many people outside the universities, the focus has been on confrontations and arrests.
Where does this disconnect come from? Most people don’t participate in on-the-streets protests or experience any of the disruption that they cause. Rather they rely on the media to give a full picture of the protests.
FYI these protesters are not pro-HAMAS as they are the actions by the Israeli army and government so please stop framing it in that lie.
Plus before any one tries to use antifa or BLM as agitators keep in mind that antifa stood arm in arm with the JDL in facing down the KKK, Aryan Nation, like minded slugs….so to say that they are antisemitic is a goddam lie!
All Americans should remember the protests from our past for so many good things came out of them.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Gulf South Free Press 
Which is why it’s becoming increasingly important to national security that we have an increased focus on teaching critical thinking skills from late elementary through college level in order to reduce the impulsiveness of forming opinion based on the emotionalism of the moment. I mean MANADATORY. More so now with the threat of AI completely making us mistrust anything we hear, read, or watch on TV. College campuses have often been the centers of public protests largely because of the young generally following idealistic philosophy as they come of age. It’s common to judge the “adults” running the country at any given time, especially when it’s college age that might be drafted, or starting to vote.
When I was in high school we had one American History instructor that was openly against the Vietnam War to the class. A Business Law instructor thought Communists were around every corner.. even to blame them for the occasional outbursts of classroom rowdies (I was failing his class one semester simply because I was young and impetuous and had a poor set of priorities. When I went to him for the grade I told him I was doing the best I could but that the commies in class were diverting my attention. He gave me a passing grade, thus saving me from the inevitable parental diatribes when I got home.)
Point being, nationally we really need to start teaching kids how to do contextual research as part of critical thinking.
I agree but when you have people like the leaders in Mississippi and other Southern states that care less about education then we get stupid in place of commonsense. chuq
When I was in my teens, I joined protests in London against the Vietnam war. The media reported them as ‘Anti-American’ protests, choosing to ignore that they were anti-war. They also claimed they were organised by ‘Communists’. As I was a member of the Communist Party at the time, that allegation was true of me, but I was not an organiser, and most of those who organised the large demonstrations were not politically-aligned at all, just protesting for peace.
Best wishes, Pete.
Exactly…media likes crap over substance….not much has changed from those days. chuq