Rev Left Radio - Student Encampments for Palestine: An Interview with Student Organizers

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Students and organizers Cheli and Phia join Alyson and Breht to discuss their different experiences on the front lines of student encampments at Cal State LA and the University of Oregon. Together, they discuss the reasons for their protests, share the differing reactions from university administrations and faculty, and give listeners an inside look at the negotiations, stratagies, and current developments of the encampments - all while highlighting the reason they are doing this in the first place: to help work toward a free and liberated Palestine! Help baby Fai'a in Gaza get surgery for a genetic disorder HERE  We Are Not Numbers Follow Students for Justice in Palestine at CSU Los Angeles HERE Outro Song:  "The Sound of War (Remix) by Eddy Mack, Norhan, and Abu Batata --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to over 300 bonus episodes in our back catalogue, as well as new bonus episodes each month. 

Hello and welcome to Red Minus. My name is Allison. I'm here with Brett and two guests that I'm very excited to have a conversation with and introduced shortly as kind of a brief upfront for this episode. You can kind of think of this as a follow-up episode. You can kind of think of this as a follow-up episode. to the episode that we did previously talking about the student encampments. So we spent some time trying to analyze those from sort of a theoretical and tactical perspective, and things have happened since we made that episode. So notably, that episode, I think we recorded the day before the UCLA encampment was attacked by Zionists and then later raided by police. Columbia has cracked down on their encampment.

Many encampments have taken deals and come to agreements with the university that involved disbanding in exchange for a variety of different concessions from the university. There have been a lot of developments. At the same time, there are also encampments that are still going and that are still involved in negotiations and are very actively continuing to struggle through this right now. So we want to kind of touch on that by talking to some students from some of the encampments. So real quick, we have Chelly here, who is a student at Cal State, L.A., part of the encampment there, where there is an ongoing encampment, I think on day 31 today, if I'm correct, that has still been going and is very vibrant. And then we also have Pia from the UO encampment, which reached an

agreement with the university and took a deal there and decamped in response to that. And I don't know exactly how many days that encampment made it to exactly, but it was also one of the longer-lived ones. So that to 24. 24. Okay. I mean, still quite some time. So with all that said, I mostly want us to have a conversation between the four of us and really hear, you know, from the experiences of the students at the encampments here from their perspective, what's going on, what's shifted, what the goal of the encampments has been, how things have developed, you know, these broader questions. I think, you know, we're in an interesting juncture point right now. There are not too many encampments left. The summer is coming.

There's a real question about how the terrain of struggle is going to shift. And so now, in my mind, you know, is a really good time to start to like wrestle with what the lessons are that we can learn from the last month and really figure out how that's going to lead us into the summer because, you know, obviously the genocidal violence in Palestine is not stopping anytime soon it looks like. So the need to continue to exert pressure and to fight foreign material demands like divestment is as important as it's ever been. So with all that said, you know, I think we can go ahead and just jump over to our first question, which is what motivated the foundation of the encampment at your school? And what are, or in the case of Oregon, were your demands?

Is there either of you that'd like to take that first? I can go ahead. Hi, everyone. I'm Chelly. I'm a student currently at the Cal State encampment. What motivated the foundation of our encampment was, you know, it's kind of interesting because obviously there was, we were deeply inspired by the work that was done at Columbia and other encampments that had popped up. Our encampment didn't start until May 1st, which was like right the day of basically that UCLA was swept. And I think that there were obviously obvious motivations about wanting financial disclosure, divestment. But also, it's a little

interesting at our campus because, you know, in January, there was a pretty big and kind of historic strike that happened in the CSU-wide system. And that ended after one day, you know, people were expecting maybe weeks, maybe a semester-long strike. So, you know, I think there had been just built up frustrations about actions not being taken or us not being taken seriously enough with the demands that we have, whether that be about like fair wages for faculty or something like this divestment from Israel. So there was a lot of energy around wanting to take some sort of really direct action. And as far as our demands, disclosure is, you know, the first one. There's some information available online about our university's financial information, but it's not clear.

They'll say we have $6 million invested in mutual funds. Okay, which mutual funds? So our first demand is disclosure so we can take a look at all of these specific financial information and see which one of them are benefiting from genocide. Divestment is our second one to divest from all. endowment and non-endowment investments that are currently profiting off of the genocide that's happening. And then we have a third demand that goes into severing all ties with the military industrial complex. So that means ending partnerships with Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, which we do have partnerships with in our engineering school.

then a declaration for the administration for the school to acknowledge that there is a genocide happening and, you know, make a declaration in support of Palestinian liberation. Then amnesty for student, faculty, staff, and community protesters, you know, we're asking that no one get suspended, arrested, expelled. And the last is reinvestment. So we're asking that the school move some of those investments back into things that like help our students and our faculty and staff. So, you know, that includes things like putting more money into our mental health services because we currently have like, I think the standard of care is like one counselor for every 1,500 students, which still doesn't seem like the best. That's, I guess, the standard of care. and we're way below that. So, you know, one of our demands was like reinvestment back into

our school. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I think the context around that strike is definitely interesting. Having a partner who's a part of the union that participated in the CFA strike definitely got to see up close some of the frustrations about how that one day approach to it ended up going. So I appreciate that emphasis on, you know, focusing on being taken seriously in the base of what happened there. Fia, would you like to share anything about the demands at Oregon and sort of what motivated the foundation of the camp there? Yeah, we had kind of similar motivations in the foundation, at least. We started in our encampment, I think, on May 2nd or slightly beforehand. No, actually, yeah, it was definitely slightly

beforehand. But it was in retaliation to our demand, or a demand that we had set previously for May 2nd for the university to meet some of the demands that we had set out through previous sit-ins, previous die-ins that we had done. We had not been met with any negotiation, but we set a deadline that we kind of had to abandon given what was taking place in Colombia. We were also incredibly inspired by the students there and knew that we kind of needed to readjust our time frame to apply pressure in that way, like through solidarity. in the act of an encampment. So our motivation was very, very similar. As far as our demands go, we had a little bit of a different experience that I think kind of speaks to the deviation happening. Obviously, the strength that we saw across the country with college students is that when we were all engaging in this action with this explicit goal that was all the same,

of divestment, that's kind of where our power came from. And what we saw at Oregon, as far as our demands goes, is that we started really strong with just divestment and then protections, cut off protections for faculty, staff and students speaking out, cut off any academic ties with Israel, cut off any financial ties with Israel, and then divest from any other external war machine, U.S. imperial war machine investments. and we were pretty quickly, like, shut down by faculty and staff for the demand of divestment. We had, like, several personal letters come out from the university president, like, kind of slandering the students saying, you guys don't understand, you don't even know what, like, is happening. These demands aren't feasibly met because of the way that our UO Foundation is set up, which isn't true. It's intentionally misleading to, like, kind of alienate students. students from that process. But once we started kind of buying into that rhetoric, we ended up

dropping divestment from like our reasonable demands with it as a future goal and started pushing for disclosure. And then from there, we had to further, we opened the door to further be bullied by administration to kind of back our demands down, which is how we got to the place of like taking the deal that we did. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really helpful context about, you know, the shift in demands over time that occurred there at Oregon. Broadly, right, so it sounds like there was a shift to making disclosure and ask, how much information was there going into the foundation of the encampment about the financial holdings at the University of Oregon? Did you all have some insights into that already?

Or is that something that, you know, is yet to be revealed? Yeah, so we did have some insights. It's like there is verifiably $2.8 billion that we sent to Lockheed Martin, and, you know, they're not doing good stuff with it. But there's like that discrepancy of like they are able to say, oh, well, there's less culpability because we are not directly making these investments. We are just investing in a firm that holds these investments. And then we kind of had to straddle like, and like we were semi aware of this. But we were to wear at the time. time how many other like financial resources might be invested in similar thing because the pushback that we got especially within like negotiations they were incredibly patronizing condescending and like overall just not really willing to negotiate especially on the fact of divestment so we felt like it was almost hindering us in a way because they kept hammering home like you guys don't know what you're talking

about which wasn't true we wanted divestment we still want divestment and just because we don't know specifically who they're giving their dirty money to doesn't mean we don't want them to you know or we don't want that to stop so basically they kind of bullied us into being like you can't even ask for that you don't know what it means and unfortunately we kind of we kind of walked into that a bit. Sure. So, Chelly, I guess a question for you real quick, has your camp experienced kind of similar in that condescending attitude and sort of the approach to talking about divestments of saying, like, you don't even understand these are like foundation funds or whatever, you know, we've all heard some of it. Has there been kind of similar interaction there?

Definitely. But we just kind of pushed back against it. Like something they tried to say was that there's varying levels of visibility in regards to mutual funds. So then, you know, we would just kind of push back and say, well, the Securities and Exchange Commission requires mutual funds to report their holdings. So, you know, if you are committed to financial transparency, then you actually can disclose this information. We just sort of went really hard on research so because you know I we were expecting to be treated like we didn't know what we were talking about right and you know none of us were um like economics majors or anything but we went really deep into the financial reports and you know trying to learn what all these

different things mean so that they didn't have even if they did try to patronize us or treat us like we didn't know we were talking about, we could just sort of respond with, you know, an extra level of knowledge and information that they couldn't really argue with. First of all, just huge salute to both of you and your comrades for doing this important, amazing work. You know, it's being recognized around the world as a holy good thing, recognized directly by Palestinians in Gaza, you know, showing support and gratitude to the student encampments in the U.S., fighting the good fight. And, you know, the university is a sort of microcosm of the broader society because

through the tuitions that students pay to the universities, that money then gets put into these universities' hands, which go and invest it in things, not like, you know, things that could help students or reduce tuition or help people's mental health, as Shelley mentioned. But to invest in Israel, and on a broader macrocosm of that is our entire society, where we all go to work and pay taxes to a government that takes our money. And instead of investing it in health care, in housing, in child care, and environmental protection, and anything that actually benefits communities and human beings here at home,

it's invested in the global imperialist death machine abroad. And so there's this really direct material connection between the students in this case and the ongoing, you know, genocide and apartheid state in Israel. And so that makes the university is a sort of material choke point. It's not merely symbolic. It's not just here's our opinion on things. It's like, no, this money is directly going to fund and be invested in this genocidal slaughter machine. And we want it to stop.

We want our tuition to be spent not on killing innocent human beings, but on making life better for the students and being fully extracted away completely from any of the military industrial complex. and it's a match of nation. So I just really wanted to give both of you a salute up top and thank you both for coming on. But the next question is, you know, realizing that this is a really a global movement of people across the planet, you know, standing up for Palestine.

We even saw the Israeli embassy in Mexico get attacked in the last week or so by protesters who are on the side of Palestinians. So with all that in mind, how do you personally kind of understand, understand the place and the role of these student encampments within this much broader pro-Palestinian movement. So this is like one of my favorite questions to talk about, honestly.

I think that we have a lot of power specifically as students, not only just the historical context of students, you know, normally being at the forefront of social movements such as these, but the fact that so many people in Gaza right now are young people, people, people who are under the age of 18, it gives us a really unique opportunity, especially with the affordance of social media. I have several contacts in Gaza that I like texts regularly,

that are just women my age, that I feel like that is just something completely unique to the movement, that it really does change the dynamic and the role that we play as students in the wider movement. The encampments specifically, seemed like a movement of escalation that we were collectively taking. And a lot of, like,

a waking up point for a lot of people that there is no, there is only complicity in silence in these situations. There, you have to do everything you can. Um, in institutions such as these to work against the inherent harm that it is doing. Um, a lot of week, like a wake up call for a lot of people on like how deeply involved the U.S. imperial like war machine is in all of the conflicts, all of the genocides that we see across the world right now. And I think that young people and students have never been like more acutely aware of that than through the work done at the encampments and just revealing the like the school will always choose the side of capital. We'll always choose the violence of the state. We'll never truly listen to

its students because it's not designed to. It is designed to create this like money funnel into these, the same, you know, investures that tend to create the problems that we then in 20 years teach about in these institutions and say, oh, that was bad that we did that. So I mean, if universities are supposed to help us break the cycle of history, then I think students are the ones that are internalizing that and actually enforcing it now. Yeah, absolutely. And before I let Shelly answer for herself, I just wanted to make clear that, you know, this is, this is a, there's a historical precedent for these student uprisings, and they often do get results, even if they're not immediate, you know, during the anti-apartheid movement against South African apartheid, you know, students from Spellman, Morehouse, Howard University, Tuskegee University, etc. They organized protests, strikes, teach-ins, boycotts, divestment campaigns. And they were similarly treated patronizingly by their administrations, by the or corporate media, but they were on the right side of history. And eventually, you know, that is now completely integrated into common sense that

these students were 100% correct. And their activity, their protests was a material, you know, factor in the shift away from supporting apartheid South Africa. And so we're really seeing that again. And so kind of seeing those historical reverberations, I think, are really important just to, you know, reconfirm and revalidate the fact that, you know, in 20 years, in a generation or two, this is going to be common sense, and all these assholes patronizing the students, calling them ignorant, say, you don't even know how these

things work. You know, they're all going to be in the dustbin of history and, you know, lathered with a layer of shame for their complicity in this genocide. And so I think that's an important thing to constantly reiterate. But Shelley, did you have any answers to that question in particular for you and your university? Yeah. I think it's an interesting question because you know, at Cal State, LA, we have a very small Palestinian student body and also a very small Jewish student body where it's mostly like Latino-Chicano students. And, you know, there's very few people that have, I guess, identities that align with, you know, the Palestinian conflict or, you know, Jewish students. So it's been interesting.

seem to see that. And I think that the, what's really being shown is that, you know, this genocide and, you know, the powers that are involved, whether that's our school president or, you know, the United States government is, it's just really a clear example of settler colonialism, Western imperialism, and the earth. and the willingness of students who, you know, don't have any personal ties to Palestine, but maybe have personal ties to the experience of settler colonialism or their indigenous history or the experience of being an immigrant feel really, really motivated to participate in this. So in terms of like a broader movement, I think that.

think that this has been really mobilizing for a lot of people because not only do they see it as an effort to end a genocide for Palestinians, but they also see it as an effort to end imperialism and settler colonialism, you know, wherever it is. And disrupt this system of powers that, you know, have been just ravaging and displacing and, you know, killing populations across the globe. So I don't know. It's, it's been really, really cool to see. And, you know, aside from the student encampment work, I do some tenant organizing. And it's just been interesting seeing how, you know, at UCLA, there was some of my tenant union comrades. who are supporting the UCLA students, and they ran into a landlord that they had been fighting

in a building in Koreatown. They have a sort of council called the K3 Tenet Council, and this family owns all these buildings in Koreatown and across Los Angeles. So they've been fighting this campaign against this family who've been displacing, you know, mostly immigrant communities in and around Koreatown. And they saw them there on the other side, you know, fighting against them at UCLA. And, you know, it's just, it's connected. All these things are connected. So I guess this has been a really good opportunity to really take a direct action and stand up against these powers that be.

Yeah, no, I think I really appreciate you bringing up those connections to other struggles. I can't speak for other cities because I'm not in them, but in L.A. It's been really fascinating seeing the broad variety of groups that have mobilized around this. You've seen anti-gentrification groups focused on Chinatown, who have been out involved who were outside of Karen Bass's house recently yelling her down. You've seen groups that do tenant and anti-jutrification work in Little Tokyo moving in a lot of these spaces as well. It's been really interesting. And I think, you know, very profound to see those connections to other struggles getting drawn. And, you know, it's just, it's been really cool because I think there is more than just, you know, the fight for

Palestine, which is the primary expression of this broader contradiction right now. But the contradictions of capitalism and imperialism emerge all over the place, right? And that ability to connect those struggles, I think, is what allows us to build enduring opposition. So that even when one crisis shifts in some way, there's still the ability to move on and adapt to fighting other instances. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I feel like I would be very mad at myself if I didn't at least also add to that conversation in the context of like the little microcosm that we have at UO. This year specifically, we kind of saw what's happening on the larger national scale with, you know, indigenous rights kind of being rolled back on the federal level.

we saw a lot of our indigenous communities at UO being ignored. The yearly powwow that they is the oldest powwow in the state of Oregon that is like still going on was over scheduled or like scheduled alongside a like $50,000 something concert put on by the school two years in a row. and they had to literally fight, like, tooth and nail just to get them to acknowledge the fact that they did that and get them to move the concert. And we, at the time, like SJP and, like, organizers who were already involved, we all showed up for that kind of, like, exposure that they, like, they needed people to create that pressure and that power, especially when you're dealing with. with other students that are taking their, you know, their go-heads from administration and might, you know, kind of be swayed by that. And what we saw in response was like, just

complete unity during the encampment between like our indigenous community and the Palestinian and Arab community that we have here. It, like, it really emphasized the, the motifs of colonialism, of settler violence specifically, of, you know, land back was a big part of a lot of our teachings because of that, you know, connection that we had to Nassu already, which is at the Native American Student Union at UL. So I think that like a lot of those pre-existing, like, like Shelley was saying, like those pre-existing community connections, whether it's like through tenants, through fighting landlords, through fighting for equal opportunities, for fighting for unhoused people. Like they all, they all came back to like reinforce the notion that like we have all been saying, these are not separate issues. They are 100% interconnected. And you can see it by the people perpetrating them.

Yeah, no, I think that is really important. And, you know, the settler colonial. contradiction is, like, so relevant for us in the United States, because we are living in a settler colonial society, right? I think it's very important to not fall into seeing what is happening in occupied Palestine as, like, exceptionally different from what's happening in the United States in many ways, because that core contradiction and relationship to occupation of land, you know, is still very much operant there. I think I'm going to go ahead and shift slightly to the next question, because I think there will be some very interesting, you know, discussion here. So one of the things that's been interesting watching us is that universities

have taken a lot of different approaches to how they've responded to encampments. So there are universities who the day that an encampment went up, they sent in the police to sweep it. There are universities that by and large ignored their encampments. There's others that did, you know, kind of in between. UCLA ignored it for a little bit. And then after allowing the Zionists to attack it, they sent in the police. We've seen a wide range of responses from universities. some of engaged in negotiations, some have refused. So I guess my question for you, too, is, you know, what is the response that you all got from the university? And also, did that meet your expectations of how you expected the university to behave in response to the encampment in its demands? We have not received, you know, we haven't been swept. We haven't really even encountered a lot of agitation or Zionism. coming onto our campus, which we were fully expecting.

And so I think that we've sort of been able to do other things with that space. But in terms of how the university has responded, five days after our encampment went up, our president sent out an email to everyone on the campus email, which is probably around 35,000 people that said our encampment was spreading anti-Semitic rhetoric and that we were had graffiti carrying messages of hate and bigotry is what they said. She also said that Cal State LA unequivocally supports free speech. These activities are not that. she claimed we had fireworks and that we had, you know, we were blocking walkways, all of these

things that just were blatantly lies, you know, they just weren't true at all. So it's been interesting because in our negotiations, she then flips the script and tries to say things like, this is our encampment and like, you know, what you guys have to. done here and created this beautiful loving space, but then we'll receive emails from her or we'll see the messaging she's putting out to the broader community and it, you know, totally contradicts that. So she's a politician, you know, and I think that she's acting as that, as the face of the university. She's just using her words to either garner support with faculty or, you know, the larger community when it serves her and then when she's in

communication with us tries to make it seem like that we're working together. Thankfully, we haven't been, you know, we've obviously been surveilled and we have campus police that are tied to LAPD, but it hasn't been violent in that kind of sense other than just surveillance and drones and things like that. that. And then for the large part, our last negotiations with her, we sent an email making a very clear list of like actionable items that she can take in order to respond to our demands. And it's been six days and we haven't heard back. That is infuriating to kind of have her just drop off, you know, in the middle of those

negotiations. I guess so an interesting thing that you mentioned there, is this kind of like recuperation of the camp that she's trying to do, right? Like this is our camp as a campus. You know, we all come together as if she's on your side or has been involved in the camp. Um, alongside that, has there been any walking back of any of the lies that were told like about anti-Semitic graffiti or anything like that? Or is she trying to kind to hold both of those at the same time? She's definitely holding them both at the same time. We, we had a, um, a meeting with her pretty soon after that moment. message was sent out. And we told her, hey, since you sent that email out, there's been more people

coming around that are trying to harass us. There's a lot of talk online about concerns and, you know, people, you know, when you read the email, she tried to place semantics with it and say, like, well, I didn't say you were anti-Semitic. I said that there were some words that could be, you know. And I was like, you know, when you look at an email like that, you're not dissecting exactly how it's worded, like the feeling you're going to get is this camp is the anti-Semitic. So we told her like, hey, this is putting us in danger. It's just not true. And you need to respond to it because we're receiving backlash from it. And we're also feeling like our lives could be in danger because of it. And it's still linked. If you go to our school's

website. It is the first thing that you see at the very top. It's in red. And it says, like, a message regarding campus safety from President Eames. And you can still read it there. So many people, a faculty, came together and, like, got a bunch of, like, hundreds of signatures about taking it down. And it just, she hasn't, she hasn't taken it down. Yeah. I mean, I think you're right to just take, she's a politician, right? It's the duplicity that we see from politicians generally. I think, yeah, it's so ridiculous in this particular case. L.A. Times originally reported unquestioningly being like, oh, there's anti-Semitic graffiti at CSULA, and people pushed back. And L.A. Times actually followed up with the president to try to be like, hey, could you point to an example of that?

Because, you know, people are saying no. And the president's answer was, I can't point to it because I don't want to repeat that language and spread a hateful message further, which is just the most. obvious lie, right? It is kind of next level to see. Pia, do you have anything on the response from the university that you all got and whether it matched your expectations at Oregon? Yeah, 100%. I think that, I mean, we also experienced a lot of pushback from admin, not quite to that extent. We were expecting a violent response, 100%. We set up camp with the intention of preparing for a sweep within the first few days. And I 100% think that they knew that.

And it was a strategic move on the part of administration to ignore us in the way that they did. They knew that what we were preparing for, what we were like, the reaction, essentially, that we were prepping for and putting our resources towards. And they let us waste our resources for them. And they took like this, let's just sit there. them out kind of approach, which definitely came as a surprise for a lot of organizers. And the specific responses from the university president, he sent out like five or so letters because there was obviously like no acknowledgement on behalf of the administration for at least

the first few weeks as far as like negotiations goes we tried to like get negotiations to be public we tried everything we could but he refused it was it was very much like we are going to lock a few of your negotiators that we will approve and into a room with people that we're saying are negotiators but they're not they're just there to pacify you so they they were like burning us on both ends essentially they were having us waste our time with this negotiation stuff and then also like taunting us like we had police officers even like coming up to us and inquiring about like our security um blocks like if there was a block that no one was on security for around the camp we had police officers like coming up and feeling

comfortable being like hey what's that about what's your what's your uh guys's a security shift looking like tonight so it was very strange the way that they They kind of tried to flip it on our heads. I'm not sure if that makes sense. But, yeah, the surveillance, the email responses specifically, we were able to respond to all of them directly. But it didn't make too much of a difference. Like, at the point of negotiations and, like, specific administration responses,

I think that's, like, past the point where. the crucial shift happened, I think the lack of police response and us being completely unprepared for what the camp was supposed to do in that situation was definitely the first hit. Sure. Yeah. No, I think that's interesting. And the other thing you mentioned that I'd be curious to hear both of your thoughts on is the closed door negotiations, right? So the University of Oregon forced those to happen behind a closed door were open communications like in the camp or live streamed or something, something that you were fighting for, and they just refused to budge on that? Several requests, can we just make this a public event?

Like, we just want, like, people to be able to see this. We even held a trial at one point that ended up bringing into a rally that ended up turning into a hard lock outside of the administration building. But we publicly invited Carl Schultz, who is, unfortunately, our university president. and invited him to public negotiations that would be held in front of the encampment where we could discuss openly with the student body present and as witness to all of the things that he has said in negotiations that are objectively horrifying. But obviously he's a coward, so he didn't take that opportunity. Yeah, of course. Shelly at the CSEOLA encampment was open negotiations a requirement that you all set going into negotiations with your admin? Yes. We told them we wouldn't meet with them unless it was, we actually said unless it was inside of the encampment.

And that got a lot of pushback and she didn't want to do it. she you know it we it moved from she wanted five of us to go meet her in a room and then we said absolutely not and then she's like okay well we can have it um down the way in the garden we said no we can and then she said we'll have it right outside and then we said well you can just come inside um so she did meet us for two negotiations meetings inside of our encampment which we saw was a huge win. But we also were not, we were going to refuse to meet with her if it happened any other way. Sure. Yeah. And I know different camps have landed different places on this. Some ended up doing open and some ended up doing closed negotiations. Could either of you speak on like

why open negotiations was such an important goal? And also maybe in the case of Oregon, what the results might have been from not having won that particular goal. Yeah. For sure you, I definitely think it is very detrimental. Like, the dividing conquer technique took them a long way, like the admin. Um, just being able to isolate negotiations made it so hard. Even with like us as a camp dealing with the bureaucratic decisions and like the responses, it, it definitely put everything in the framework of administration. because it was on their terms, you know, like Charlie was saying, like, they stood their ground

and said, no, we'll meet us in our space on our terms with our demand. And instead, I think that us meeting them on their terms definitely gave them more power to push our demands. Yeah, that was a big conversation that we had. We said, well, what does it say if we already are giving something away? what does that say for the whole process of negotiations? So people felt really strongly, me included, about staying super firm on meeting, at least for the meeting, having it be on our terms and having them concede to that because that's kind of sets the stage for what the negotiations could be. I think that I feel really grateful to a lot of the students and, you know, just people that are in the encampment that have really like kept reminding all of us over and over

that negotiations is one tool in a large shed of tools that we have and that we shouldn't place it at the forefront because we have all of these other ways that we are also using to try to win our demand so that we shouldn't put all, you know, put everything on negotiation because we're engaged in direct action. We're in an encampment. So, you know, there's ways to be tactical and to think about, okay, if we're engaging in negotiations, how do we also use another tactic alongside negotiations to sort of work together and not putting so much, you know, or like, important. on just this one thing. Right. Right.

Yeah, Fia. Sorry. I know that we should probably... No, you're good. But I think it's very interesting, like, what you were saying about other modes of pressure. Because I do think that at you, we put a little bit too much emphasis on the negotiations

as, like, the solution, I think. Obviously, we were also engaged in a direct action, but we also got very heavily cut off from external community members. So our direct actions, like, kind of were suffering because of the camp in some ways. Like, community members felt really ostracized. There was a lot of inciting. And I think that a big reason behind that was because, like, Shelley was saying, like, you kind of do need those outside reminders when administration is just down your, like in your ear saying, oh, you need to fix this to negotiations. You need to fix this negotiations. You need to fix this negotiations. You need to fix this negotiations. There's no other alternative in admin's mind. It needs to be solved like a political bureaucrat. And anyone who didn't agree with that, they labeled as outside advertising immediately and said, we will not negotiate with you.

if you've got outside educators in the camp at all, which is another thing that I feel like we, like Charlie was saying, we kind of set the stage for them pushing us rather than us pushing them when we made the rule on their behalf, no outside community members at camp. Right. Yeah. And I think it's meaningful that clearly negotiation is the terrain that they're comfortable on, right? That's where they want to have these kind of conversations. And so keeping that in mind, you know, when figuring out the tactical approach, I think is very much. important. Yeah, well, we're definitely going to get back to the non-student community members here in a second. But before that, I think what has just been said is really indicative of this fact that there

are similarities between encampments and also big differences. Differences in administrative approach, differences in relations to the outside community, differences in their confrontation with police, differences in tactics, negotiations, et cetera. So with that in mind, what are your thoughts on developments at other encampments? Have you learned from them? positively or negatively, what is sort of your relationship with, you know, encampments happening across the country and sort of how that's informing what you and your encampment has been able to do? We've definitely learned a lot from other encampments, and I think we really benefited from our start date, which, you know, came, like I said earlier, right after the first UCLA sweep

And also during our time, early our encampment, we saw other CSU schools, which is the system we're a part of take deals, make progress on negotiations. And I think each one of those examples has been able to sort of inform and, like, shape our tactics and what we can collect. decide we will accept and what we will not accept. There was a lesson learned from Riverside. They came, some students from Riverside came to our camp and pretty early on after they had taken their deal. And, you know, for people who don't know, part of the UC Riverside deal was that the school agreed to form a task force to, I think the wording was like, explore the removal of the Riversides Endowment. And this was really disappointing to a lot of the students there. And they also had closed-door negotiations with a couple of students who, you know, went away and then came back.

And they were like, okay, we made a deal. And the fact that there was no commitment to any sort of divestment in that deal had a really big impact on us. And, you know, in that, in that, that moment, we kind of, we already knew this, but we really decided like, okay, this is something they're going to try to push on us. They're going to try to get us to accept a deal of a task force to just explore things. And, you know, we need a stronger commitment than just that. I think every single encampment, seeing what happened at Humboldt and the occupation of buildings and seeing negotiations get, you know, deals get taken, whether it be like at San Francisco, where their president agreed to divest from weapons manufacturers.

Okay, that's, that's something. Is that something we want to work with? Or seeing what happened at Sonoma, where the president agrees to fully divest and then gets fired. You know, so that's another learning opportunity. I think that every single encampment has been really, really, really informative for us. And, you know, we're still here 30, I think this is day 32, 32 days later and really been able to like refine our, refine our goals and be clear on what we will and will not accept. Absolutely. Fia, do you have anything to add to that from your perspective? Yeah, I think it goes a little bit both ways.

We took a lot of inspiration, obviously, from other encampments on our escalation techniques, on kind of the idea of teach-ins and open education, popular university, creating a library, all of these other great ideas that we were able to implement over the course of the camp. But we also did it to our own detriment, where we were comparing ourselves to other schools that got deals. And kind of using it as a limitation we set in ourselves, mostly enforced through admin telling us, this is the best you're going to get, this is the best you're going to get, this is the best you're going to get, this is the best you're going to get, but that, like, with these other schools kind of taking subpar deals, because I do believe the deal that we took was disappointing and subpar. and I stand with like what Chely said about like the disappointment in seeing deals taken that don't include divestment when originally we went in with the approach of we're here till divester rest. So we we did ourselves kind of a disservice of being like, well, look at the other deals happening around the country. This is, you know, a competitive level to a lot of the other deals.

This is as good as a lot of the other deals are getting. So we kind of, like, looked at what camps were accomplishing and put that as, like, a ceiling on our own willingness to take the encampment to the furthest extent it needed to go. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Sort of allowing the other results to, yeah, set the limit for where things are at in a way that can be tricky. I guess so, you know, we've talked a little bit about learning, you know, almost like from the example of other camps in terms of how they wrapped up. And Fia, you mentioned briefly, like learning from teach-ins and stuff. Was there anything that, you know, else learned from encampments, how other campments set up, you know, public teach-ins, how they set up defense? Were there, like, tactical lessons being learned there? Or was it more kind of high-level, I guess?

I mean, we definitely were doing, like, I'm not sure which school it was. I'm pretty sure it was on the West Coast. but there was a school that was practicing riot training and like linking arms and just practicing in the case of a police with riot gear, what do you do? And that was something that we thought was really interesting. We did a lot of security trainings.

We did a lot of media training, things like that that we took directly out of the pages of like what we were communicating with like our comrades in other schools what they said was working best what they said looked best especially for like an outside perspective it sucks having to play that performative game but there are some things that just read better to the general audience like our public library like that did a lot of good as far as trying kind of like getting media to be at least tolerable Um, and I feel like we, again, to our benefit and detriment, because it was great, we got a lot of the techniques that like the media was praising schools for, but we shied away from a lot of the techniques that they were doing, maybe that were a little more escalatory. You know, we, especially occupations of buildings. I think there was so much in fighting regarding. that, that even though people were, you know, pushing for escalation as, as things weren't changing. We were getting frustrated. We were losing momentum. We missed our opportunity for that because instead of just following the script for the schools, we were following the script and the response. We were looking at the reaction communities had. And we were focusing on that too

much. Kind of an optics focus in that sense. I'll say like I think there's been like huge lessons learned from all of the other encampments and it's just been really amazing seeing so many different students come to our campus to teach us things from different campuses like you know whether that's security training or whether it's offering teachings and I think that it's easy to like as someone that's like like involved to get sort of wrapped up in everything going on and to be point fingers and be like, well, they're doing this and we didn't do this or, you know, and ultimately like every single one of these students that has been involved in one of these encampments is amazing, you know. Yeah. And if there are bad deals taken or if, you know, whatever the, what cases, mistakes are made, Like, it's, I think, like, not the fault of the students. It's the fault of these institutions that are investing in genocide, you know?

And we're doing our best and, you know, trying to make the best decisions. But villainizing each other or, you know, being upset that things aren't handled appropriately. It's really like a product of this, like, system that is. the one that's like perpetrating all this violence. Right. Yeah, I know. I know. And I think that's like the important thing you come to, which is that the universities could just grant these very reasonable demands, right? Like everything that's happening here is ultimately on them more than anything. And I think like, you know, I'll interject briefly and then I'll go back to you, Pia. Like theoretically, right, I think it's important to say like making mistakes and suffering

losses is how we formulate tactics and strategies. Right. Like it's an unfortunate thing and it's difficult to wrestle with that a lot. But I think, you know, I, of course, I'm always going to be like, hey, go read some Mao. But this is a really important idea in Mao's writing and his work on how we know things, which is that we try to engage in struggle and we have victories and we have successes and we assess them and we try to figure out the causes. And we don't go at each other's throats and just shut each other down. We productively struggle with each other so that as we move forward, we're going to be able to engage in, you know, new tactics, new strategies with the knowledge of the previous ones. And I hope, you know, whatever conversations we're having

talking about all these different encampments, it doesn't sound like we're trying to throw anyone under the bus. What we need to do is quite the opposite, right? We need to synthesize the experiences of all of these different people and figure out how we go from there. And I hope that's what this episode is contributing to in some way or another. Fia, I think you had your hand raised. Yeah, I'll be really quick. But I think as far as like criticism goes, I 100% agree with both of you. And I think as a student that was part of an encampment that took a less than ideal deal, it felt the pressures of admin that felt like there was, you know, not, or that we were in a position where we were being manipulated and very much like shut down. I think that

the way that we can turn that into the most positive lesson, other than just continuing our activism and using it as momentum, is to share why we got stuck in those positions. like what turning points for us were where it went that way. And I think the closed doors meeting was definitely one of them. And then the lack of occupational escalation was the second. Yeah. So real quick, I'm going to go ahead and get to the next question because it actually, I think, comes back to something you mentioned previously, Fia, and that, you know, has to do with some of those turning points perhaps. So the next question that we had for both you is, What is your encampment's approach been to relating to non-student community members and also kind of tacked on there, also to relating to faculty?

I have so much to say on this one. If you don't mind me going for instance. Contentious is a word that comes to mind. It's unfortunate the way that the kind of shortcomings of what camp accomplished, despite its many victories. the shortcomings that it experienced in its demands really created a rift within the leftist community and the UO activist community. We have experienced probably equal hate from Zionists on our Instagram at this point as we do from community members that are just like really, really upset that we didn't

escalate further that we didn't take that initiative and I mean I feel that it is counterproductive to you know call students cowards for like the way that things went but I also empathize with them on a very deep level like a lot of them are are very committed to the cause so it's it's this weird place with community right now where we from the get go shouldn't have have listened to admin when they were like, no outside community members, why? Um, but then on top of that, like, the relationship just kept like deteriorating as we moved more and more towards an admin style solution rather than like a grassroots style solution. Um, and kind of the opposite happened with faculty.

Um, as we left the support of community, we kind of came into the support of faculty. faculty was very much in support of us without the escalatory measures. They were supportive of us, like, excluding those measures. They didn't want us to escalate. They didn't want us to jeopardize what they saw is like, oh, well, this is the, this is the correct path we should be taking. But, like, with Admon. And we even saw that, like, on the hard lock that wasn't even, I wouldn't say, like,

an aggressive escalation. It was a demonstration. And even that, we had faculty and, like, more institutional members come up to us and say, are you guys giving up on negotiations? Are you guys done with negotiations? It doesn't seem like you're willing to negotiate if you're doing this. And, like, kind of showing their hand that they're fully missing the point of the demonstration, of the pressure. That on top of like the wording that they used was just very admin coded. And that's just something that wasn't compatible with community, like for a lot of reasons, obviously. So kind of when that switch happened, we found obviously a lot of support in faculty.

but recently, and that hasn't changed, like now we're in a position, the encampment's done. The encampment, we packed up, we took the deal, community was mad at us, staff was very, very happy, elated, in fact, which was just a little bit, made me feel worse about it. but recently we disrupted the president's investiture and we had like a staff member or not a staff member, a faculty member who was doing introductory speeches and who has been part of negotiations and is currently in faculty union negotiations come up to us after the fact and imply kind of that what we were doing, the disruption that we were doing was making it, hard for them in their union talks. And he said, he was like, you know, you got to do what you got to do. But I will say that after that, the union talks were tense. Kind of like, and we know that like the president took it personally, that we disrupted his really little vest shirt. But he is 100% or I think this speaks for admin more generally. They take it out on faculty and then faculty has this incentive because they want to protect the students. They love the students. But they also are,

feeling this pressure from administration. They have their own demands that they need to be met. They're working within this separate framework than what we are. And I'm not sure completely how compatible it is with a lot of faculty. No, that's really interesting. And I'm glad you hit on that last point, right? That it's not just like maliciousness from faculty, right? Like there are internal contradictions here in lines of division that the university knows how to play, right? I think that's one of the things like hearing coming from Oregon. The university has been shockingly competent there at responding to you all with the kind of ignoring approach, with the kind of playing those lines of division. And so to a large degree, I think, a lot of what

you're talking about is an intentional thing that the university knows are fracture lines they can hit on and put pressure there in order to kind of complicate the situation more for you and for faculty. And, you know, we could even get into grad students because there are some strong unions there in Oregon as well. Chely, did you have anything on that question? Yeah, we've had just the most amazing response from our community. And I think there was a little nervousness at the beginning of, you know, none of us really knew each other, even the students aside from a chord group. So, you know, there was obviously concerns about just letting everyone in. But I think, you know, we've had a whole month to figure this out now.

just being also situated where we are in East Los Angeles, which has, and especially our campus too, Calcadilly, which has a really rich history of activism. We've seen groups come out like the Brown Berets, which were, you know, militant Chicano movement group in the late 60s that did a lot in fighting against, like, police brutality and stuff that has stayed around in East L.A. for all these years. So we've seen, um, a lot of these groups that have been around in East L.A. for a long time really come out to support us. Um, and at this point, we have, like, a fully running, like, medical tent with, like, five medics. We have, you know, three meals a day, basically, that's brought in from community. We have clothing,

we have housing. Like, it's, we have a really pretty sustainable, um, little commune, basically, on our campus. And it's been really possible through the community support that we've gotten. I mean, it's almost, it's, it's almost our demand. edge. Like, we'll put some, I think one time we put a post up on our Instagram and we said, like, hey, guys, like, we need a cutting board. And within the hour, we had like 15 cutting boards at our camp. So I think community support has been super, super crucial. And it's become a space at our camp where groups can come in and host their own events. And now that our camp is not, seen as one that's like violent or really facing a lot of repression. It's been able to sort of

turn into something else. And let's see, faculty, it's different. You know, there's some faculty that have been living at the camp basically since day one that have been incredible and really collaborative and, you know, we're all equals, feels like we're all equals in the spite. Like we're both fighting against the same school system that we feel like should be proactive in divestment. There's other faculty that I think similarly have really pushed back on mentions of escalation or felt like we were losing sight of negotiations if we did focus on escalation. So, I don't know, there's a, there's a power dynamic there that doesn't have to be there that some faculty have enforced. But it, it, I think, honestly, can sometimes relate to whether faculty

is a lecturer or whether they're tenured, um, And yeah, I really agree that they have a different positioning within the university where they do work with admin that can prevent them from being, you know, maybe as radical as they would want to be or just from being more radical or aligning themselves with what we're doing. Yeah, I appreciate you calling out that, you know, like the class position of faculty is not universal, right? like a lecturer versus a tenured full professor in a different situation in a lot of ways. And I definitely think there's interesting ways to think, too, about how that positions the university, right? And it's really complicated, too, because I think a tenured professor is in a better class situation that might make them more stable to push for more militancy, but they might have less class interest in it as well. So there's all of these kind of complicated internal contradictions that are going on there in that relationship for sure.

via yeah i just wanted to expand on what telly was saying about like community bringing food and like the the self-sufficiency that these camps have i think that is like a universal factor that is so beautiful about this type of of pressure and and escalation is that it really does or it has the potential to strengthen those community ties because we started out that way as well we had like great community support and I think that other camps that are you know looking to this this part or this episode as like bidence or as what to do and not to do I would say to go more the route of leaning into that community support 100% because I definitely think it was a big mistake dressed to not yeah and that segues perfectly into one of these last questions we

have for both of you and you just kind of gave one right. there, Fia, but what are some of the lessons that you've learned in your encampment that you would want others to know about, assuming there are people from other encampments that might be listening to an episode like this, that are trying to learn from, you know, the sort of synthesized lessons that you both have explored throughout this entire conversation? What are some of the main lessons that you've learned that have come to mind from your experiences in these encampments? Well, there's many, but also I don't want to preemptively give any lessons while we're still ongoing.

I think that the really beautiful thing about the Cal State-L.A. encampment that I've seen is we are a working-class university. and, you know, a lot of us, most of us commute to school, we work jobs, one, two, multiple jobs, people have children, and there's been, like, talk around saying that, like, oh, well, you know, Calcutta lay can't sustain itself because, you know, they, you know, they're not like these other camps where they have the means to be there, like, or, or, you know, there's even been some talk about, like, there, uh, you have to be privileged to participate in something like this. And what I've seen at our camp is, you know, quite the opposite of that. Um, there is a profound amount of dedication and militancy on our campus that comes, you know, from students that have a lot to lose, actually, in terms of, like, you know, living paycheck to paycheck and maybe being undocumented or, you know, whatever it is, the types of students on our camp, that is who we are. So, I guess, I don't know, one lesson that I've learned from this experience is that we at Calcutta, L.A., you know, represent, I feel like a poor working class brown people, brown institution, and that doesn't hinder us from dedicating ourselves to action and

militancy, I think it actually makes us stronger. And our community support and, you know, really has made that possible. So, yeah, I don't know. There's something really beautiful about the Kalsi-La campus. If, you know, anyone listening is in the area or nearby to come visit it, there's a lot of really beautiful intersections on our campus. And, yeah, it's, That's what I can think of right now. I don't have a lesson yet, but I guess just a reflection on the experience of being there. And, you know, it's really something that's like kept the fire going within us is, you know, we're used to struggle at Cal State, L.A.

So we're, yeah, we're a really strong group over there. Fia? Yeah, obviously I come from a very different position with my camp being done at this point at my school, but I would agree with a lot of, I wouldn't even say that it's too early for you to share lessons on the camp. I understand the, you know, kind of worry of it, but everything that you're saying resonates completely. like even to the i mean obviously we deal with an entirely deafened demographic at university of Oregon um it is a very very white school uh but the people that we saw taking on the most risks were the people with the most to lose the students of color the students that like do feel that class that class pressure like you were saying alley um and i think that the the lesson that i take

from that is that, like, within these communities, there is such connection that there needs to also, like, be recognition for those privileges or, like, for the, that sacrifice that a lot of people are making, and regardless, but mostly for the people that have the most to lose. And I'm not sure if we did that enough at camp, but I would definitely recommend that for like other camps at other in other states or schools to make sure that you are recognizing focusing and centering the the sacrifices that people are making because like rhetoric is way more important than you think it is in these kind of

situations and the way that you talk about your engagement even if affects how everyone is involved. Like we had a lot of bureaucratic problems where we cared more about, okay, what is the, what is everyone voting say? Everyone has to be here. Everyone needs to have a say and we're going to do it like very, like, stale, like, sterilized democracy kind of. where we should have been listening more to people who did have more to lose. Like there was a lot of instances in our camp of, you know, white students coming in, most of them being on like their first real activism and like learning 100%,

but also kind of taking too much space and not leaving the space for those who needed to be elevated, like our Palestinian students, like our Muslim students, like our students of color, that were facing the majority of the harassment. So I think being very hyper aware, especially in these places, where that intersection comes on privilege, on cost, on the price that you pay just by participating. And then as far as like also on rhetoric, I want to expand, because that was a big lesson that we learned, because we did engage a little bit too much with a kind of reformist rhetoric, I think. And I just, I can't overemphasize how important it is to be fully aware of the way that you're talking about decisions, the way that you're talking

about negotiations, the way that you're talking about demands, and making sure that it is as transparent as possible and as, like, grounded in camp as possible, not grounded in admin. Even though you're asking admin for those demands, like it's, like, uh, Chelly was saying to, to not even give that up because at the more you give up, the more they will take. Um, yeah, so if I, I think if I could go back and do anything, it would be to, to yell at us like, hey, I'll leave. students of color, don't listen to admin about community members, and don't participate in a, you know, neutered rhetoric that is ultimately going to land you in a position of having to settle. Yeah, that's very, very helpful to hear. And thank you for kind of synthesizing all of that, right? I think these are all points that we built up to throughout this conversation in

interesting ways. And I, yeah, I'm very glad to get to hear from you both. And I will say, you know, the thing that you've highlighted, Shelley, that I think is true also is like just the feeling in the camp that you all have going is incredible. Like, I've never been in a space with such good vibes, which sounds like a really silly way of phrasing it. But I don't really know how else to put it. There's an incredible militancy. There's an incredible principle. And there's an incredible amount of community that is just beautiful to see in the face of fighting imperialism. Right. Yeah. I do want to stay really fast. Just like. Yeah, please. I think it is, I think we actually have learned, like, from past movements, you know, from Occupy, from other, from other movements that have come before us. I do think that there have been lessons learned. And I think that it is being sort of exemplified in our camp. You know, there's obviously ways to be better where we can have more numbers. That would be great. But it, I guess, we're. I guess we're. what I was thinking about a lesson would just be like staying principled is probably a big lesson in making sure you know what those principles are and you stick to them because it can get confusing. But yeah, I think we've learned a lot from other examples. Yeah, that's been one of the coolest things to see, I think. And yeah, we tried to highlight that on our last episode too is like watching the development from Occupy, like Brett and I,

were both around for that and it was not, you know, there are a lot of mistakes made, right? And watching a lot of those mistakes and not get made this time has been really incredible to see. And I do think, like, you know, we shouldn't brush off that like no one is learning. People are learning. There are real advances tactically and strategically being made that are incredible to see honestly and bring me just like quite a lot of hope. Fia. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that and I also just wanted to like add to like the good vibes feeling as well like many of us were despite the the tragedy and absolute just there's no words to describe the thing that's bringing us together you know the genocide that we are are rallying to to protest our involvement

in and like despite that like the the community that has come out has been like so amazing I 100% agree with that. Like, I have met so many people with similar principles, similar values, that has, like, made my organizing outside of camp stronger now because I have those contacts. So I do think that's also a super important lesson, like, to take from it as well. Awesome. Yeah. So I think with that, you know, I will quickly just say thank you both so much for coming on the show. I really, really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you here and just like to get to know both of you and to in the context of this as well. It's been incredible. You know, I'm so, so, so proud of the work that you all are doing that all of the students in this movement are doing, which has been a really incredible thing. And the amount of just like bravery in the face of a repressive state apparatus. Like I know that all the students who are out there saw what happened at UCLA. They saw what happened at Columbia. They've seen how the state can.

crack down and to choose to push back and kind of fight in the face of that is incredible. Oh, yeah, Fia. I totally forgot. I was going to say this. Sorry. Also, looking back at past admin, like, responses, like, we've had divest from fossil movements at UO. We've had, like, we had divestment movements from apartheid South Africa from the law school during that, like, time period. But we have things to look back on and we didn't put enough weight onto like how closely they were going to follow that script. Because they let the, they did a hard lock for divestment from fossil fuels. They let them sit there for three days. No response, no nothing. They had to voluntarily delock in the same way that we did. So the more, and a lot of this stuff we had

to like learn as we were going. But the more research you can do into how your school has responded previously, the better I think as well. Right. Yeah, no, and that's good advice. No, you're good. And I think that's important advice, too, because a lot of these schools have faced divestment paddles before, right, in the context of South Africa, or yes, the fossil fuels. I know there are schools in California that have faced too. So, yeah, you can maybe get a sneak peek at the playbook of the university if you go back and look at those, right? So with all of that said, I guess my question for you all is just, I want to give you a chance, if you have any last words, if there's anything that you want to close on, anything that you want to

recommend people check out theoretical works, stuff that's been important for you, whatever, honestly, anything. But yeah, I'm really thankful for all of you coming on. It's been a fantastic conversation, and I'll throw it to you all to close out with whatever you'd like. Thank you so much for having me on. And it's really great to meet another fellow encampment student. If you, I guess I'll just say if you want to stay, if you want to stay connected to our campus, you can follow us on our Instagram, SJP at CSULA. And, yeah, if you're in the area, come visit us. It would be, we're open doors to an extent.

I do have quite a bit to plug. There is a site called We Are Not Numbers. It was co-founded by Dr. Refat Al-L-Lir. and I highly recommend anyone who is interested in seeing a more human perspective that isn't focused on, you know, students here, but instead students in Gaza specifically, that is, in my opinion, the place to go to. It is how I met someone who I now consider a very close friend in Gaza, and it is a level that you can add to your activism that shapes it in a entirely different way. Having the ability to hear other students' voices and have them communicate the impact that we have is life-changing. And it undoubtedly has a changing effect on the movement. And I would highly recommend incorporating those students who are intelligent,

charismatic, amazing, beautiful speakers that want to be heard and should be heard and should should have their voices elevated, incorporating them into your activism is more important now than ever, especially as a lot of us are graduating. We have the position to kind of call to attention that scholasticide. And the fact that there has been so much loss for students our age that we can relate to, obviously so much loss, regardless of our relationality to it. But yeah, I definitely recommend checking out We Are Not Numbers.com. Heartbreaking, amazing writing there

can't recommend it more. And yeah, if you're ever in Oregon, we just got a Middle Eastern and North African Study Center through the deal. So he would like to come and help us plan more activism or escalations to get the rest of our demands met. We are always here.

Awesome. Yeah. Again, thank you all. much for coming on. I hope that, you know, this will be useful for people. I hope this conversation can help do some of that synthesis we were talking about. And I know I feel like I've learned so much just listening to this conversation, hearing these different experiences and how there's been divergence and convergence. I think it's just so important for us to map out. So I'm really thankful for both the you being. Absolutely. And I second that. Thank you both and keep up the amazing work. Thanks. Thank you guys. This was amazing. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I love talking to smart people such as yourselves.

I get scared. I do anything for my people, but I don't know what to do. Just tear and cry every day. You see all of the kids around me? They're just kids. Why wouldn't you just send a message to them to kill them? News telling lies. Check the facts that they cover.

Because my people out here crying or they dying or they suffer. And just notice for my people up in Gaza and Ramallah. And it's free Palestine until his back was motherfucker. Blastin, this is the sound of a war, can you hear me scream? Why can't you see how much more do we need to bleed? What's charging and we're fighting can't get rid of us? You know, it's Santa girl, we walk down this land is ours. Freed, Boston, this is the sound of a war and a crap of peace.

Because I know that everyone knows it's time to take Palestine, We will hesitate now I know, I know that this is the sound of war. What about in Uts, the Mala, West Bank, yeah, for Gaza. Two time for the people in palace, I'm strapped up, ready all black and a hopper. Don't worry about your back, I got you. All gas, no brakes, no style lights. I'm gonna come through heavy in my potlight. I do not want friends, I do not need fools.

Yes, I found peace, but I swear on God I'm down for war. Rock is dropping this war zone. And I got brothers in the checkpoint just to get home How to get like that? How we let this happen? Better pick your side. Don't give me that all out matter. Are you riding?

Ready for the action? World cold that's all get it cracking. Click clack with the blowbacked it. I lick back and the ski match ready for cleaning. Because I know that everyone knows it's time to take Palestine back this town. We want to take now I know I know that this is the sound Because I know that everyone knows it's time to take

Hellas down back this town We want to take now I know I know That this is the sound of the world Oh This is the sound of Oh This is the sound of This is the sound of

Thank you.