There is no encampment protesting the genocide of Palestinians at Kansas State University (KSU). Some may see this as a failure, but, as I will argue later on, I believe it demonstrates strength and professionalism of the organizers, the KSU chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA). The KSU YDSA was assisted by other organizations such as the Flint Hills DSA. However, it was the students who led the way.

The students were very clear in their demands: They demanded President Richard “Dick” Linton to resign from the U.S.-Israel Agricultural Co-Operative, for transparency in all investments of the KSU Alumni fund since its formation in 2014, and for that fund to completely and unconditionally divest from all “israeli” capital immediately.

This report takes the format of an After Action Review, or AAR, a methodology borrowed from the United States army. An AAR is a standardized methodology for conducting report-backs. It consists of answering four simple questions:

1. What was supposed to happen?
2. What actually happened?
3. What can be sustained?
4. What can be improved?

I encourage all comrades to study this methodology and replicate it in your own organizations, because it works. You may doubt me on this point. I’d simply retort that, so far, the feds have kicked our asses, so why wouldn’t we borrow effective techniques from the winners?

A final note: I wish to be abundantly clear that although I am a member of the Flint Hills DSA, I am not a KSU YDSA member. I speak here in my own capacity and not as a representative of any group. The KSU YDSA were the organizers of this event and all credit belongs to them.

The author of this report-back giving her speech in which she argues that the United States is an illegitimate government that should be subjected to subversive actions, and that this is the greatest form of solidarity the American people can have with Palestine.

To be clear: I am proud of the work we did, even if it wasn’t as dramatic as other encampments. Drama and flair are not always good. Though I would not at all classify it as boring, I would classify it as lacking in notoriety. Part of what makes an encampment appealing is that it makes for an attention grabbing headline. Students, particularly younger ones with less wisdom and organizing experience, tend to fill in the missing gaps with romanticized and idealistic notions.

Many organizers (and this problem is not at all limited only to students) think that the most important aspect of a protest is the spectacle of it. They also commit adventurist errors such as thinking arrests are a sign of commitment to the movement, rather than a hindrance. These muddied and erroneous thought patterns are remedied in one of two ways: through a careful study of theory and analyses (such as this article), or through battle scars won in struggle. When possible, it is always better to learn such lessons from the mistakes of others rather than from oneself.

Such romanticized, idealistic, and liberal notions of protest were thankfully absent from the KSU YDSA and their planning process. Seasoned community organizers were able to share our experiences collectively of arrests, police brutality, misguided ideals, and, ultimately, of failure. The students wisely listened and learned from our mistakes, and, as a result, none of them were repeated. This is commendable.

Nobody was arrested to my knowledge, and I was on standby to bail folks out of jail. The potential for fights was absolutely there, but not a single one broke out (not due to a lack of trying on the enemy’s part). Our formation defused tense situations with professionalism and ensured the safety of all participants from both law enforcement and their fascist goons.

With that said, I do have some advice to offer the students. I will remain constructive but will not hold back — just know this is in no way to denigrate the efforts of the student organizers, who did an amazing job. This is out of love for communism and a desire to end the genocide of Palestinians.

What Was Supposed to Happen?

This forms the base of my criticism. It is not clear what exactly was supposed to happen. We spoke of encampments and vacillated between the idea of establishing one or remaining mobile, but no plan was made clear until five minutes before the event. Various comments were floated, but there was never a single clear decision point made by the group. I will elaborate more upon this in the “What Can Be Improved?” section.

What I can say with confidence is that the organizers intended that the demonstration would last for an indefinite amount of time. The purpose of this event was also clear: the intent was to criticize President Richard “Dick” Linton for his presidency of the U.S. Israel Agricultural Co-Operative and demand his resignation. A bold demand for complete divestment was also made.

The demands of the KSU YDSA, in their own words, presented to University administration

What actually happened?

Planning

What actually happened was as follows: we started with a week’s worth of planning led by Cde. Nick in the KSU YDSA as well as with backup from the community. Cde. Nick is the public face of the protests, and his identity is publicly known to the university administration, so I will use it with his consent. I also use my name because I was a public speaker.

Planning sessions were lively and involved a broad array of both students and community members. Relations were cordial between the two, and I feel as though there was strong integration and respect. Although community members (such as myself, among others) did take on leadership roles, I personally believe that all of us were cognizant of the fact that we are subordinate to the students, and that we are members of their movement in a supporting role. I genuinely do not believe any community member ever tried to co-opt or commandeer the student movement. Even when community members disagreed with the students’ decisions, they still respected them and executed accordingly. In other words — there was good order and discipline. The errors of commandism and tailism were avoided.

Commandism and Tailism

Commandism is an error which occurs when Communists try to dictate to the people what they must do without properly consulting them or seeking democratic input from them. It represents a “left” deviation because it is a manifestation of the Communists being ideologically too far ahead of the masses. A commandist could very well have the correct political idea and the correct line, but, without buy-in from the people, and without their consent to Communist leadership, none of that matters.

In this context, commandism would look like me barging into a student movement and immediately giving orders to the students, telling them what to do, changing all of their slogans without consulting them, and generally acting like a dictator. What’s important to note is that commandism is not offering guidance or criticisms — all Communists have a duty to criticize and to advocate for the revolutionary line in every situation. However, the key word here is “advocate.” As Communists, we must be cognizant of when we are guests in someone else’s space and know when it’s time to lead versus when it’s time to only lend our support. A student-led protest is definitely a time when Communists should be following the lead of others. However, that does not mean that Communists shouldn’t offer information and advance a radical line.

The opposing error to commandism is tailism. If commandism represents the “left” deviation of being too far ahead of the masses, then tailism is a right deviation that represents lagging behind the masses. Commandism represents seeking no input from the masses; tailism represents letting the masses determine our political line irrespective of the masses’ level of consciousness and development.

Going to the masses to ask what their views are is correct and good. However, the masses are not a mystical entity. They are a group of people to which the reader and the author both belong. The masses contain multitudes of opinions ranging from fascism, through centrism, liberalism, and to social democracy, to communism. The average character of the masses’ politics will depend on the overall level of class consciousness and political education among its members. The Red Clarion offers a fantastic schema that explains this idea in greater detail.

So, in the context of rural Kansas, the masses can be said to firmly oppose genocide as the average level of political development. This is positive, encouraging, and correct. However, it is not true that the average worker in rural Kansas supports full-on liberation of Palestine. They do not support Hamas, PFLP, DFLP, PIJ, and other armed resistance groups. In fact, they are likely to accept uncritically the label of such groups as “terrorists,” and are more concerned with the cessation of only the most extreme forms of brutality, as opposed to ending the ongoing process of settler colonialism. The masses are starting to grasp at the correct idea, as they’ve clearly and righteously broken through the bourgeois propaganda which tries to justify genocide. However, there is still ideological work to be done — clearly liberalism still lingers though it is being steadily eroded away.

In this context, tailism might look like saying “Well, we don’t want to alienate people by endorsing Hamas or even armed resistance. We really want popular support, so we should keep this toned down. We don’t want to look like terrorists. Besides, people in Kansas don’t really give a shit about national liberation struggles in the Middle East. Let’s just tone it down and keep it reasonable.” Although there is clear concern here for peoples’ opinions, this concern is one of appearances and marketing, rather than a true two-way consultation which would inform organizers while sharpening the masses’ collective consciousness. The logic of tailism is not of deep respect for the people, but of deception and condescending refusal to challenge errors which evidently stand between the people and their own liberation.

Tailism can also take a more insidious form revolving around identity politics. Tailism might point to a Palestinian-led liberal organization such as Al-Haddaf K.C. and highlight the fact that Palestinian diaspora members lead this organization as evidence that we should follow their lead since this is a Palestinian issue, in spite of their liberalism. While it is always a good thing for Communists, especially white ones such as myself, to be cognizant of racial and other social dynamics at play in our organizing, what this amounts to is actually hiding behind whiteness to defend oneself from the vulnerability associated with taking a political stance.

Members of a diaspora community, like members of any community, have all sorts of opinions. There are liberal Palestinians, conservative Palestinians, nationalist Palestinians, Communist Palestinians, radical Palestinians and reformist Palestinians. Palestinians suffer from a unique and particularly egregious form of national oppression and settler colonialism which gives them a unique outlook. However, at the end of the day, they are just people, like anyone else. People have all sorts of views; some extremely backwards, some very advanced, and most falling in the middle. To assume that someone’s ethnicity automatically gives them a correct opinion would amount to a kind of tokenism and racism.

As stated before, I feel this group did a fantastic job at maintaining the correct ideological stance. Neither the mentioned tailist nor commandist errors were committed. The KSU YDSA deserves recognition for balancing this incredibly difficult line.

Planning Continued

Students were thorough and meticulous in their planning methodologies. They engaged in what I would consider a quasi-militaristic planning process — and I mean that in a good way! They considered organizational, physical, and material factors in their planning. For example, comrades wisely paid close attention to the weather. A big storm was brewing in the area, and there was a lively debate on how to handle that. The students ultimately decided “Rain or Shine, For Palestine!” even though the storm didn’t materialize until later that night. I commend the student-organizers for their attention to detail and consideration of factors that more novice and inexperienced folks might overlook.

Community members, in turn, heard the concerns of the students and supplemented them with supplies. For example, when I personally heard about the weather, I offered to drive to a local sporting goods store and purchase twenty ponchos for the core organizers to stay dry during the rain. I also purchased two cases of bottled water, knowing that folks often get dehydrated and forget to bring their own hydration sources. Because of my status as a labor aristocrat, I was able to peel away from work for an hour in the middle of the day to accomplish this task. Other community members, while they didn’t necessarily have that privilege, were able to contribute however much they could afford. In that way, the community listened to the organizers and took their lead. We pitched in with resources at their direction. The end result was a well-oiled risk mitigation machine. This is a methodology I strongly advise all other encampments to reproduce.

The Event

During the event, Cde. Nick gave a good speech arguing for full and explicit Palestinian liberation, praising the Intifada and affirming the right of Palestinians to resist their occupation — undoubtedly the correct ideological line. 

I gave a speech arguing that people must sabotage their workplaces, agitate among coworkers, and foster a general attitude of contempt towards the United States as the leader of imperial violence. My goal was to build support and consciousness of the need to overthrow the government as the best possible way that Americans can help Palestinians.

A Jewish student and scholar of the Torah gave a speech about the relationship (or lack thereof) between Judaism and zionism. He argued that zionism is not Judaism, and that Jewish values stand in firm opposition to the colonial brutality of zionist occupation. This anonymous comrade also affirmed the right of Palestinians to resist their occupation in no uncertain terms.

These explicitly political speeches were rounded out by other students coming forth to read poetry by Palestinian writers such as Mahmoud Darwish and Refaat Alareer.

At points, the event did show some signs of disorganization. Upon returning to the site of the speeches after a short break, I found folks had abandoned it. In the process of abandonment, they left behind a lot of litter. They also left behind the Bluetooth speaker used to give speeches. Given the heightened state of repression against Palestine organizers, I immediately began picking up the litter and cleaning up the mess by myself out of a desire to protect the students. Not only was this a simple step to avoid giving the administration more ammunition, it was simply the right thing to do ethically. All Communists should take care to leave a community space better than they found it after hosting a demonstration of this nature. After cleaning up and securing the equipment, I texted the organizers to ask for assistance, yet nobody responded until forty-five minutes later. It was a student attendee who happened to read our group chat, not a core organizer, who volunteered to help me transport and secure the goods. 

When I arrived at the new site of protest, on the corner of Bluemont and North Manhattan on the university property, I noticed a large crowd of about fifty to one hundred people. This crowd was diverse relative to the Manhattan baseline in terms of its racial composition and its age spread;it had student and community representation, and there were young children in addition to elders present. This is a reflection that our demonstration was doing something correctly. There were no phony and artificial divides here. One for all and all for one!

This may sound small for those in an urban environment, but to get ten people to show up in rural Kansas is a success, much less one hundred! Given the circumstances this turnout was impressive. Our last rally only netted forty at the most.

Zionist Agitators

After standing on the corner and waving signs and banners for an hour, the group decided to march to President Dick Linton’s house to set up an encampment on his lawn. This formation was eagerly tailed by both police as well as fascists. The police kept back at a distance and monitored things. They seemed to be actively coordinating with one another. However, I wanted to keep my distance for safety purposes, so I didn’t investigate further.

The fascists on the other hand, were all too eager to approach us. A group of six zionazi agitators from the Young Americans for Freedom student organization tailed our formation. They were evenly split between men and women, and all of them were white and seemed to be of a petit-bourgeois background, based on what students told me. The leaders of the group had a look in their eyes like that of a shark hungry for blood. It was clear to myself and other community members that they represented a threat that needed to be dealt with.

Given the large police presence, using violence was not an option. That would have constituted the error of adventurism, and would have given law enforcement the opportunity they so desperately craved to crack down on us violently. But it would have been a grave mistake to let the fascists simply pass us by just because their police handlers stood by in reserve.

Thankfully, my comrades had a clever scheme ready to use. A group of four of us, all queer individuals, three of whom are transgender, decided to confront the fascists with an interesting technique. This particular YAF group is famous for “just wanting to debate,” and so we indulged that desire!

Many comrades correctly caution against debating fascists. In this instance, we feel that it was actually the correct choice to engage them in debate. Firstly, none of us had any illusions that we were going to change their views. That was not our point of debating them; our intent was to use the debate as a stalling tactic. Fascists are often white egotists who love the sound of their own voice almost as much as they love the taste of a policeman’s leather boot. So, we used our womanly and nonbinary charms to let their egos feast.

The reason debating fascists is usually bad is because it gives them an audience to manipulate. However, in this case, by debating the fascists we actually denied them an audience. The only people around to hear our “debate” were the police, who had already made up their minds by virtue of wearing that uniform. Furthermore, we were able to stall and delay them by over an hour which gave the students ample time to set up their encampment without having to fend off violence by Nazi sympathizers. And because debates are completely legal, the police simply sat on the sidelines and watched.

No one was arrested. Nobody had to go to the hospital. The group remained safe as they set up their encampments. The police had to bog down their available manpower and resources to keep an eye on us and the fascists. The fascists were unable to find the encampment. Overall, I consider this a success.

Eventually we tired of this debate, and some comrades were starting to feel unsafe upon observing the fascists body language and aggressive posturing. This is entirely reasonable since our group was composed entirely of gender minorities. So, we decided, after over an hour of delay, to leave. Of course, we were trailed by the Hitlerites, but, by using techniques I learned in the army, we were able to lose them inside of the student union. That was the last anyone saw of them that evening. 

Encampment

I had to leave soon after dropping the fascists, but, from what I heard, the encampment was overall a failure. Only twelve students actually stood around the whole night, and the police swiftly broke up the encampment. Thankfully, no arrests were made. However, peoples’ tents were confiscated and the students were driven away by the police and warned that if they came back they’d be arrested and charged with trespassing. That dampened folks’ spirits enough, and sadly put an end to the K-State occupation of 2024.

What Can Be Sustained?

• Bonds between students and community. This model has continued on in our organizing, and it is one of the main reasons I credit the success of the YDSA and their efforts. Despite this close bond, it was clear to all parties that the students lead the effort and that the community was to play a supporting role.
• Planning for contingencies. In particular, considering the second-order effects of the weather and how it might affect attendance, planning for various contingencies, looking into the needs of the people such as hydration and snacks, and novel de-escalation techniques for dealing with fascists can all be sustained and even replicated by other Communists.
• De-Escalation Tactics. Nobody got hurt, the fascists never caught up, and police made no arrests. The fascists didn’t achieve their goals. I call that a win in the strongest of terms.
• Radical and principled messages. Despite the pressures from liberals and university administration, the YDSA remained steadfast in their unconditional support for explicit Palestinian liberation on Palestinian terms. They did not shy away from proclaiming support for armed resistance. Furthermore, they allowed radical speakers to give speeches that call into question the legitimacy of the American Empire.
• Political Education. Many of the organizers had attended various sessions of the Kansas Socialist Book Club’s series on the PFLP’s Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, which I credit for the radical messaging. Because the KS-SBC helped educate these organizers and students, they had a solid understanding of the theoretical basis of Palestinian liberation. This prepared them well for organizing this event.
• Clear, radical demands. There was no wishy-washiness and no beating around the bush with the group’s demands. They were bold, uncompromising, and radical. They were also specific, achievable, and impactful. They neither gave into liberalism nor bolster reformist illusions, and they were very politically relevant. These goals reflected a great deal of thoughtfulness and careful research from the students.

What Can Be Improved?

• The overall desired method of the protest was not at all clear. Did we want an encampment, or did we want to simply have one night of protest? This decision was never made clear. To improve this moving forward, organizers must ensure that a democratic decision is made one way or the other. Should changes be made once the original decision is arrived upon, then those changes must similarly be made in a democratic fashion and published clearly for the entire group to know.
• Undemocratic leadership. I commend Comrade Nick for his overall organization and skills as a leader. However, I did notice that he seemed to be exclusively running the show and that he didn’t seek much input from other students. This caused him a great deal of mental fatigue and stress, which we’ve discussed in individual conversations for hours since this event. As a result, I believe most errors of this can be traced back to the “Charismatic Great Man” style of leadership. It is a positive trait to be bold and ambitious! However, you’ll burn through yourself like dry prairie grass if you don’t let others take over some functions.
• Lack of operational considerations. A question I found myself asking was “How do any of these tactical considerations contribute to the strategic goals of boycott, divestment, and sanctions?” It seems like the group came up with the demands, and then the protest was something that happened because it was what everyone else was doing. But I did not see much discussion or linkage between the protest itself and how that contributes to achieving the demands.
• Unclear chain of command. There was no delegation of duties as far as I could tell. It was unclear who the point person was for each particular task. The only exception to this would be for the delegation of a media spokesperson, and the group handled this very well because everyone knew where to send all media questions. However, there were no other committees or chairpeople for important tasks. Everything was done on an ad-hoc basis, creating delays, stress, and confusion. So, moving forward, the group needs to democratically convene and decide on what positions are important, and appoint individuals to chair those commissions. The Red Clarion has a great example of a template for committees that can be used in the future for these kinds of protests.
• The encampment itself. Ultimately, a small faction of students decided to attempt an encampment setup. I believe, in retrospect, this proved to be incorrect. Thankfully, by the grace of God herself, no one was arrested or harmed. However, this presented an unnecessary risk. If the group had less luck, then we would be singing a different song right now. There were no supply lines, no chain of command, no structure or organizational capacity,  and no means to guard and secure the encampment. It seems to me that this decision was a foolishly impulsive one; participants wanted to camp out because that’s what other campuses were doing. While I can personally relate to the fear of missing out, it has no room in professional organizing.

The college students of Connecticut participated wholeheartedly in April’s student intifada, despite the police violence and state repression brought to bear against them. No fewer than 46 Yale and 26 UConn students are now facing criminal charges in Connecticut state courts as a result of their organizing. Prosecutors, who have wide latitude to pursue, change, or drop charges, have been clear that they have no intention of backing off.

This is a clear signal that the business interests of Connecticut want the matter concluded. They don’t want any further outbreaks of student unrest. State Prosecutors are letting the movement know that, in Connecticut, the buck stops in the courthouse. The message is that, although this first spin through court won’t hurt too much (defendants are mostly being offered a court program called Accelerated Rehabilitation, or A.R., which will result in the charges being dismissed as long as they don’t pick up any more in the next year or two), they’ll be watching for “repeat offenders.” Today, A.R.. Tomorrow, a conviction.

This is how movements are broken. The state learned this lesson in the 1960s and 70s. Repeated arrests exert a pressure that is hard to resist. They bring charges and push them, so they can eventually burn radicals out of the movement. They want college students to think twice about protesting. Sure, one arrest doesn’t seem like much… but the second arrest will violate that A.R., and now you’re looking at a conviction. The third time will be probation, or worse. This is the state playbook. They’ll turn around and give a sad-faced press conference: “These darn kids. They just aren’t getting it. We have no choice but to take a hard stance.” And then all of Fourth Reich middle America will eat it up, and cheer the prison buses as they cart kids off to jail.

We can help delay the strategy of our clever little clave of Connecticut Goebbels’ by putting pressure on them, and forcing them to reconsider whether or not they really want to pursue charges against the college students arrested for protesting genocide.

How do we do that? Well, at the end of the day, a prosecutor is just a pig in a suit, and like the pigs, prosecutors only understand force. So the time has come for us to use it, to force them to drop the charges. We need to exert the pressure of public opinion. Signing petitions is a good start, but it doesn’t stop there. The next stage of organizing and escalation must be directed against the courts where these charges are being pursued.

Here are some petitions and campaigns to get you started.

Now go out and organize.

Northwestern University is a private university based in Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. The morning of April 24th, a body of about 100 students, faculty, and professors established an encampment, joining the wave of similar encampments sweeping the United States and even universities globally. The police ordered the protesters to leave and halt all activities — an order the group initially followed, but then ignored. Tents were taken down, but then put back up by the protesters. 

The demands of the student movement are simple: divestment from the zionist entity, perpetrator of the ongoing Nakba and genocide of the Palestinian people, and full disclosure of university funding. 

The encampment stood strong despite daily aggression by the police and zionist counter-protesters. The encampment endured despite specific zionist smears directly aimed to portray it as particularly “antisemitic.” Originally, campus police were to raid the encampment and attempt to disperse it, but the protesters held the line by outnumbering them. Protesters were even able to encircle the entire camp to prevent the police from entering. Unfortunately even this would eventually not be enough to outright offset police repression, as the State has virtually unlimited resources to call upon as needed. The police continued to state their intent to violently disperse and raid the encampment, but did not establish a clear date upon which this would happen. This was significant, it spelled life for the encampment: the camp was given both a material and morale boost, as they were able to continue expanding the camp, bringing in resources, etc — and more, the protestors felt encouraged to persist in the struggle. Police dispersal orders continued to be ignored.

The demonstration was seemingly winning. The encampment fluctuated in its population at first, but soon stayed consistent. As one of the protesters said, it was quite literally impossible for the police to infiltrate and arrest everyone at once. But the encampment would be defeated through other means.

A week later, and mockingly enough on May Day, the encampment suddenly ended. On day five of the encampment, the organizers came back with ostensibly happy news. A deal between the university and the organizers had been made — the university agreed to the possible future implementation of “pro-Palestinian policies” in exchange for the forced dissolution of the encampment zone. The organizers claimed it to be (and this is a direct quote) “tangible steps toward divestment.”

College president Michael Schill, however, made clear that the agreement was not in any way legally binding. From the outset, it was a proposal agreed to on completely hypothetical grounds, merely in word, and susceptible to being swept away as soon as the university finds it convenient. What exactly, however, was this “agreement”? The agreement consists of the following: 1. no protests for the rest of the academic year (ranging into June 2024) without approval from the college administration; 2. that the university “answers questions to internal-stakeholders about specific holdings” — granted, “to the best of its knowledge” and “to the extent legally possible,” and possibly (or possibly not!) within 30 days; 3. “Support for Palestinian faculty and students” which consists merely of funding two Palestinian professors and fully waiving tuition for five Palestinian undergraduate students; 4. A Muslim and Arab cultural center in 2026.

Even these meager and rotten breadcrumbs were enough to pacify the organizers and the organizers took the encampment with them. The negotiators of this agreement were not democratically chosen by the encampment, and there was no broad consultation with encampment participants about its fate. With haste, campus life returned to the mundane horror of “business as usual.”

This first clause of the agreement resulted in a May Day protest at the same location (without any accompanying encampment or direct connection to the protests for Palestine) promptly being declared disorderly and disobedient and thereby in violation of student conduct. It was immediately clear that the agreement implicitly carries with it a ban on the right of students and faculty to protest and boycott attendance at school. The second notable clause consists of much prattle and will likely only amount to merely bits and pieces of information about the university’s funding being made available to a few select people and within an almost arbitrary time range. The agreement does not allow any opportunity to combat or change the funding practices. The third clause provides no real support for Palestinian people at all. There are 2.3 million Palestinian people in Gaza, millions more in the rest of Palestine, and still millions more outside of occupied Palestine, but the most “generous” and “kind” university can provide is the opportunity for seven Palestinian people to go to their college for a few years! The last clause speaks for itself but is still worth haranguing. The “cultural center” has nothing to do with divestment at all, and is likely not taking funds that would have gone to the zionist entity for its completion and maintenance either. More importantly, the plan for a Muslim and Arab Cultural Center has been in development for approximately a year already, meaning the organizers accepted a promise for something already being planned, and treated that as a concession, as a real victory.

The organizers voted for this “agreement” by a 17-1 ratio. The tents, the megaphones and other sound amplifiers, all physical signs of the encampment, invitations extended to other parties from outside the university to speak — all of this work was sacrificed for the rest of the semester, and the prohibitions against further protests will likely arbitrarily extended into the next ones. It allows for the university to exercise repressive measures of all kinds against the students. By obligating the students to register directly with the university ahead of time before protesting, the university can proactively prepare suspensions and other academic discipline for organizers, and can prepare the police. It puts organizers, students, and faculty alike into danger, and prevents the possibility of bringing in help from experienced external organizers (e.g., SJP organizers).
The organizers betrayed the momentum of the student protests they supposedly represented for a deal which consisted of absolutely nothing those same organizers had originally asked for at the start of the encampment. Again, the encampment did not ask for anything unique — the slogan was for Northwestern to divest and disclose their funding. The organizers settled for no divestment and no disclosure. If there is to be any disclosure the administration evidently means it facetiously, as there are funds they consider “impossible to disclose.” What they feel can be disclosed is money provided in part by the tuition of exploited students and faculty, money which is deliberately and ordinarily spent by the college! Yet this was praised by the capitulating organizers as a concrete step toward divestment! They sang victory songs in the morgue of their project. The university has merely pacified the student organizers with a vague commitment to disclose any information regarding the funding at its whim. How are we to know that this information will not also end up being unrelated? How do we know the university will not simply argue that the funds that the organizers and protestors originally wanted disclosed are all “confidential” and therefore non-exposable? It is not my intent to in any way portray the protesters as wrong. They were wronged by the university and the organizers who capitulated to it on their behalf, but without their knowledge or consent – organizers who then had the audacity to announce that they had won the battle.

Further compounding this problem was that SJP, an experienced Palestinian anti-zionist organization, only came in after the start of the encampment, and were not amongst its main organizers. Whether or not they were internal organizers or external organizers, it would have been best for the students to have consulted them about this agreement.

An additional demand the organizers made was for the university to protect the right of speech, assembly, etc, for anti-zionist and pro-Palestinian students, faculty, and other people on campus grounds, who are being repressed and forced to conform with a largely apathetic liberal zionist university body. The university, like all other universities in the U.S. empire, are repressive and hostile places for anti-zionists, who are constantly at risk of being punished, ostracized, suspended, etc., for daring to not support the fascist zionist entity. Was the prioritization of the rights of these students in the deal to which the organizers agreed? No. Was a promise made by the university to hold itself accountable for this repression and to be held accountable in the future if it continued to perpetuate this repression of anti-zionism? Again, no. Was there even an attempt made by the organizers to make encampments themselves recognized by the university as merely a part of students’ right to freedom of speech, assembly, association, etc? Once again, no! They paved the way for the university to explicitly ban encampments, which the university already describes as “not peaceful assembly” or as obstructions to campus life and duties.

The organizers settled for hot air. 

One thing is for sure: when an agreement like this is agreed to, it suggests that the bourgeois character of higher education has successfully scarred the minds of the students. Through all of the constant tasks the university throws at its students, it trains them to be tiredly unquestioning whilst attempting to complete them all. Bourgeois education gives knowledge to the ruling classes; to the subordinate classes, it gives advice on how to be good servants to their masters. This results in a student body that wants to be revolutionary, and organizers which fall for the easiest of bourgeois traps. They believe they’ve won, when in fact they were defeated and brought to betray the cause they claim to represent.

Like with the other encampments, the Northwestern encampment lived a lively life, but underwent a sudden death. Unlike with the other encampments, the Northwestern encampment voluntarily underwent a sudden death. It causes worse shudders insofar as it was not attacked by the enemy, and therefore behaved in line with the enemy.

This year’s theme was “Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion.” It featured dresses too delicate to be worn and a walk through the history of fashion, while ignoring the historical moment occurring in the real world. One block from the Gala protestors chanted, “Gaza! Gaza!” and waved Palestinian flags. These students, protesting their universities’ role in funding the genocidal zionist project, spilled into the streets, demanding from these celebrities their voice alongside the rallying cry of those demanding an end to the genocide. Police arrested twenty-seven of them, but you can still hear those voices on the media footage of the event, chants breaking through the metal barricades set up on the street to reach the ears of the wealthiest and most influential fashion party in the U.S..

The dress code was supposedly the “Garden of Time,” a J.G. Ballard story about a wealthy couple who are on the verge of being attacked by an angry mob, forestalled by their magic garden, whose flowers stop time when picked. They rely on plucking roses to turn back time,  but roses and time are both running out. The garden withers; time comes for the couple, turning them to stone and their palace to dust. With the police barricading the surrounding streets and their silence on a genocide, these celebrities are acting out the Ballard story on the grand scale; the spectacle is meant to buy time for a system doomed to die at the hands of a mob.

As boozy celebs pranced about in Manhattan, the zionist occupation rained hell on Rafah, answering the protests with an ear-splitting run of explosions. Joe Biden, never one to restrain his imperialist dog in the Middle East, immediately folded on his so-called “red line.” The insulting opulence of the Met Gala was set against a backdrop of unceasing violence. At an event two days later, billionaire Kim Kardashian overheard, “Free Palestine” and replied, “Free everybody!” This sanctimonious neutrality, this “All lives matter” equivalent to an ongoing genocide, demands our criticism; the genocide in Gaza is as plain as day, and we do not accept that the best anyone with a platform can do is half-baked platitudes. We need to put the pressure on.

In another sense, though, all residents under the umbrella of the U.S.-Canadian Empire are in the Garden of Time, picking the flowers. This system will not last forever. The exploited nations are throwing off their shackles. The Met Gala itself relies on the fickleness of fast fashion, providing a respectable veneer for the destructive waste of the fashion industry. Fashion brands use the Gala for promotion, while profiting heavily from the destruction of the environment and exploited labor of the Global South. One would think, given the Gala’s theme, that these designers would pay mind to the environment they share with us, but we instead saw designs meant to be thrown away. This is an empire that uses things up and spits them out. The clothing goes into a landfill, the factory that made the clothing dumps its pollution into the water, and the human beings who made work under obscene conditions are then cast aside.

The crimes of fast fashion are the crimes of the U.S. Empire. It’s not just poor taste that inspires celebrities to carry ice purses, nor is it simply bad moral judgment that they ignore the cries of the protestors. They need the imperial system to continue to keep hold on their obscene wealth. The glitterati will always stand against the people; their wealth comes from the imperial ruling class.

But our struggles are the Palestinian struggles; the world’s struggles. U.S. police “innovation” is tested on Palestinians in occupied territory before it comes home. Capitalists — and zionists —  run slave mines in Africa, and their political interference in Latin America creates hundreds of thousands of refugees. The climate deteriorates further under the capitalist system, and they offer no solutions. The walls of the garden of time are cracking. The empire is crumbling. The ruling class is losing control.

On the question of Palestine, the tide has turned. The working people of the world, particularly the young, see the zionist entity for what it is: a genocidal state with the full backing of the US. The U.S. celebrity network celebrates in lavish outfits while our government funds and backs a genocide, but you wouldn’t know it with the coverage of the event. The media is merely the hand that washes away the blood of empire. Our government buys missiles and sends them to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian children trapped in Gaza where they cannot run; every new “safe” space becomes a bombing target. Zionist forces maim and kill civilians without hesitation. U.S. military technology is key to Israel’s entire war effort. Yet our political caste refuses to reign the zionist state in, because our outpost in the Middle East is too valuable and our empire too rigid for even genocide to make Joe Biden constrain the zionist monster.

We are living on borrowed time; the capitalist system cannot fix our climate, and the world cannot bear the weight of American consumption much longer. Our flowers are running out. Americans need to stand with the protestors and make our voices heard. We cannot afford to turn away, to retreat further into senescence and decrepitude. We must reject the genocide in Gaza along with the system that requires it. Reject the silence of celebrity and hold the American ruling class to account; put their feet to the fire and secure our own liberation. It is this that will make a truly international revolution. The Black struggle, the Indigenous struggle, and the Palestinian struggle are all struggles for national liberation. The broader class struggle — our struggle — depends on their unconditional victories. The same imperial system conducting this genocide brings its murderous lessons home to use against us. We need to struggle together, or we will die together. We who live in the heart of the empire have the choice; we did not choose this empire, but we can choose its destruction. We have the tools to remake the world. Reject our genocidal ruling class. Stand with Palestine. Stand with liberation. Stand with life. Free Palestine!

On May 15 a pig army ran rampant at California’s U.C. Irvine. Despite the fact that the semester will end next month (U.C. Irvine’s spring quarter concludes on Friday, June 14), the protest was going strong. Other encampments have been broken up by sustained pig violence and state repression; a few were betrayed by their own unelected leadership, such as the camp at Brown, and dispersed after accepting false deals and empty promises from their administrators. Not U.C. Irvine.

$32 billion USD of the U.C. Irvine endowment is invested in zionist-allied or zionist-operated companies. This money supports the continued existence of the zionist state. On April 29 of this year, U.C. Irvine students established a divestment encampment and demanded that the school divest these zionist assets and cease to profit from the apartheid regime. The encampment expanded to occupy a lecture hall on campus and maintained its radical demands. Its leadership did not waver.

This is, perhaps, why the University unleashed no less than 10 pig agencies on the students there. An army of some 200 pigs assembled outside the encampment in full riot gear, carrying drawn nightsticks, and prepared to dismantle the camp and its barricades. These colonial cops marched in jackbooted columns that are all-too-familiar to anyone who watched the pigs attack an Austin, Texas encampment earlier this month or saw the marching SS troopers break up the UCLA encampment. Just like their siblings in blue all over the occupied United States empire, the California pigs were frothing for violence. They clubbed, beat, and batoned their way through the barricades, arresting at least 40 of the student-activists. The standoff began at around 2:30 pm; by 5:30, the camp was cleared and the pigs’ dirty business was done.

The pattern has been set. NYPD’s storming of Hind’s Hall and CUNY is now the order of the day. Every outpost of the student movement should prepare for violent suppression, no matter what the current mood of the authorities may appear to be. UC Irvine justified this explosive response by pointing to the students’ occupation of the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall. Make no mistake! Whether students occupy a building or a quad, the fear has entered the hearts of the administration and the political caste that the student movement will join together with the radical elements of the labor movement.

Had there been radical locals from the community labor unions, radical clergy, petit-bourgeois professionals who support the movement for Palestine, in sufficient force, the pig army would have hesitated before they stormed the barricades and swept the U.C. Irvine students into jail. The masses have the capacity to resist the police, indefinitely if need be; but only when they are united, organized and prepared.

We once again urge the student movement to organize democratically elected councils and to join up with radical labor. Again, we urge the students to study how to retreat if they cannot hold their ground; again, we urge the student-radicals to spend the summer sharpening their knives and preparing for August.

The fight goes on!

No one involved thinks this is the end. However, slowing down and reassessing, taking time to build a more militant, developed, structured movement with a broader base in the wider labor struggle, and preparing for a resumed offensive in August and September may actually be a hidden benefit of this current ebb. The time has come to make a tactical retreat, to gather our forces, to enhance our position, and to solidify our organizations. The coming summer gives us breathing room for a more serious confrontation with the enemy state.

This Is A Class Fight

First and foremost, the need should be clear to broaden the social base of the movement. Already, tentative linkages have formed with radical labor. These must be developed and expanded.

This isn’t a labor issue merely because it’s progressive and radical labor has also been historically a politically progressive force. It’s a labor issue because the struggle for Palestinian liberation is a class struggle of the international working class. The zionist state is a fortress of western capital. It is a hub for U.S.-Canadian technical labor — Amazon, AOL, Apple, AT&T, Cisco, HP, IBM, Google, Vimeo, etc., etc. — and provides a pool of trained petit-bourgeois settlers to serve as managers and researchers in the vast technical machine of U.S. capital. It serves as a testing ground for new U.S. weapons systems and counterinsurgency techniques which are eventually used on the domestic working population here — on us. It is a forward base for U.S. forces in Asia, a watchdog for the Saudi puppet regime, and a counterweight to Arab nationalism. It provides the U.S.-Canadian empire with the launching pad for keeping oil cheap, and intelligence services that act as, essentially, extensions of the U.S. state.

Expanding the class base of the student movement to include the radical working class isn’t merely good strategic sense for the student movement and the liberation of Palestine, it is also the correct position for far-sighted workers in the U.S. and Canada to take in their own interests. The liberation of Palestine is tied up in our own liberation.

Development and Organization

We urge all class-conscious members of the student movement to work over the summer at increasing:

1. The political development of the movement,
2. The discipline of the movement,
3. The organization of the movement, and
4. The connection between the movement and the broader working class as well as the putative Communists in the empire.

To those Communists and radicals, we urge that you (as we currently are, and others outside our organization have) become immediately involved if they are not; that they assist the student-radicals in the above areas, that they offer their services to the student-organizers and put themselves at those organizers’ disposal.

The conscious and active elements of the movement will carry forward the struggle when the masses are not active. We must not surrender the struggle now, but press forward.

In order to accomplish these tasks, we urge the following steps be taken:

1. Establish  a study group or groups within each population of students planning to act in August to study the Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, written by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a constituent member of the current resistance. We have a guide to forming a study group available free of cost on the USU website, as well as draft courses of study that our Pressworkers have actually pursued. Should a student group be unable to find someone who can act as a facilitator familiar with the texts, USU can work either to locate such a person or provide one remotely.
2. Engage in training, either with USU, some other group, or through internal study to consider the ways in which discipline can be improved. Identify the absolute numbers of reliable student-organizers who will be willing to act again.
3. Establish democratic organs to help guide and lead future encampments and movement. Study the methods of conducting mass meetings and come to a collective agreement about allowing the present, continuing leadership to be subject to regular democratic elections at a short period from the membership of any camp, should such a camp form.
4. Establish  a Red Library in each locality, a physical station with copies of radical literature, that can serve as the nerve center of a broader program of political development once the movement picks up.
5. Reach out — either directly or using an intermediary (again such as USU) — to radical union locals and other community groups prepared to enter the struggle such as ethical petit-bourgeois businesses, congregations of all kinds, survival programs, and communists, to permit them to assist future efforts and add bodies, labor, organizational insights, political clout, and so on, to the movement.

From without, the enemy may see this as a period of rest. For us beneath the surface, this should in actuality be a period of hidden activity, a time of building and rebuilding; of transforming the spontaneous into the organized, of linking up each disparate locality, of broadening the base and power of the movement. Before we build barricades anew we must learn, together, to hold them.

We urge all advanced and active members in the movement to take steps to stiffen the resistance to come, to study, and to prepare for August. Toward the liberation of Palestine, and the revolution!

On Thursday, May 9, 8AM, RISD SJP Organizers sent President Crystal Williams and Provost Ghadessi an email: “We hope you are doing well. In line with our conversation three nights ago, we strive to maintain clear and open communication with you. Please find a PDF of our annotations of your email attached below. We hope to hear from you soon and talk with you in person about RSJP student representatives presenting a divestment proposal in front of the Board of Trustees and initiating a vote on divestment. We remain steadfast with our de-occupation until our demands of disclosure, divestment, establishment of a student oversight committee, and condemnation of the genocide in Gaza are met.” Both never responded to the email.

At 11:41AM, President Crystal Williams issued an email to the RISD students de-occupying the second floor of Fathi Ghaben Place (20 Washington Place) and bcc’d all RISD students, staff, and faculty. She stated: “The barricades on the second floor of 20 Washington Place violate multiple Rhode Island Fire Codes. We need you to create a means of egress and ingress by 12:00 p.m. We are sending RISD facilities and maintenance staff to help you create a means of ingress and egress that is in compliance with Rhode Island state law.” She announced, “Fire Marshals are waiting to ensure that means of ingress and egress are in evidence.” Students earlier had communicated with Public Safety officers to facilitate the moving of Furniture Students’ projects through the barricade, but President Williams and Public Safety denied that offer.

At 11:51AM, a De-occupier emailed back: “In order to facilitate safe egress, we will not further resist facilities from entering and clearing the barricades.” The email was never responded to. At 12PM, after De-occupiers told Public Safety officers that they themselves dismantled a barricade for egress, Public Safety officers continued to push through and dismantle all of the barricades and remove the chairs and tables to the first floor. Over one hundred students, faculty, and community members gathered around the building, specifically at a side entrance on South Main St. Protests continued with chanting and drumming as the head of RISD’s Public Safety Department and other officers blocked the 100+ students and faculty from entering the building. While inside, Public Safety officers pushed at least 3 De-occupiers and student protesters down the stairs.

At 1:30PM, approximately 30 students entered the building and reunited with the De-Occupiers inside the building. All students and De-Occupiers exited the building safely and joined the students, faculty, and community members rallying outside the Waterman St. Entrance. After all exited the building, at 1:43 PM, President Crystal Williams issued another email to the RISD community: “Facilities and maintenance staff have helped clear ingress and egress, and we thank the students for allowing us to ensure that we operate safely..”

Williams then went on: “Now, we are notifying students on the second floor of the following:

They may vacate the space by 2:30 pm and undergo a restorative justice process. This process is designed to be fair and just, ensuring that all parties are heard and respected. Students will be responsible for returning the space—including all furniture, walls, projects, bathrooms, etc.—to its original state by tomorrow (Friday) afternoon, meet with students and faculty whom their actions have immediately negatively impacted, listen to the impact of their actions and engage in respectful dialog, and reimburse those who have spent personal funds on no longer viable projects as a result of the occupation. If students vacate by 2:30 p.m. and the above restorative justice conditions are not met, students will be held accountable under the current conduct codes.

If students do not vacate the space by 2:30 pm, we will proceed with expulsion from Rhode
Island School of Design.” Students announced the threat of expulsion to the rally of now over 300 students, faculty, and community members to outcries of “shame!” The rally and strike still continues with drumming and chanting outside Fathi Ghaben Place (20 Washington Place). The De-Occupying students have communicated with President Williams and agreed to the “restorative justice” process in lieu of student conduct proceedings. This all comes after Monday, May 6, when 21 RISD students and community members began a sit-in at the Providence Washington building and refused to leave until their demands were met. Students, faculty, and community members participated in teach-ins by RISD and Brown faculty, art builds, dabke dancing, and picketing throughout the day.

RISD SJP demand RISD President Crystal Williams:

1. Provides total fiscal transparency of RISD’s investment portfolio;
2. Commits to a holistic divestment from companies, corporations, and institutions that are
   implicated in sustaining Israeli Apartheid;
3. Establishes a student oversight committee for future investments;
4. Publicly condemns the Israeli Occupation of Gaza as a genocide.

Faculty from the Theory of History of Art and Design, Teaching and Learning in Art and Design, Graphic Design Department, and the Sculpture Department have issued statements in support of the students and their demands.

At the rally today, one student protestor reiterated: “This is not the end.” RISD SJP stands by the legacy of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, who was Narragansett and African-American and the first female graduate of color from RISD,

“[we] will not bend an inch.”

The student movement for the liberation of Palestine continues to defy the police across the U.S.-Canadian empire. Those handful of encampments that capitulated to traitor’s bargains, promises of “studies” on divestment, or other wheedling and cajoling from their administrations, are just that: a small minority. Elsewhere, the student movement has boldly resisted the extreme violence brought to bear by local police and universities.

The time has come for escalation. The student movement should not have to stand alone. Palestine should not have to stand alone. The invasion of Rafah will be carried out by the occupation forces, but the weapons that will flatten Rafah are not being sent from Tel Aviv — they come from Washington, D.C. The rear of the occupation force is not located in Palestine, but in the domestic production of the U.S. and Canada. Weapons shipments must be stopped. Aid to the zionists must be halted. We must stand together!

The criminal Biden regime has already felt the wind of change and delayed arms shipments to the zionists. We must transform the delay into a permanent halt. The $216 billion dollars that has flowed to the zionist government since 1946 must cease. The zionists purchase 80% of their arms from U.S. war production, and the money given to the occupation government flows back into private U.S. corporations like Boeing, AM General, Caterpillar (which produces armored bulldozers for destroying Palestinian homes), Colt, Day & Zimmerman, Flyer Defense, and the ever-present U.S. behemoth of General Dynamics.

It is thus more important than ever that all progressive organizations unite into an anti-zionist front. If your union local is anti-zionist, it must unite with the student movement. If your DSA chapter is anti-zionist, it must unite with the student movement! If your CPUSA club is anti-zionist, it must unite with the student movement!The zionists are poised for crushing defeat. Let us help deliver it to them.

Whatever the origin of this behavior, whatever the individual psychological root or tactical misjudgement which gives rise to it, it is destructive to the movement. Death or arrest do not help the cause of liberation unless they are absolutely unavoidable and pursued with an overall plan to carry the fight to victory. The people do not need martyrs. It may feel cathartic to invite the lash of the state, but it is not purifying. To purify the moral stain of eating the flesh of our kin, only one thing will do: not to die, but to live; not to be held in jail, but to escape and be free; not to be a lone voice crying out, but to be the organizer of a vast chorus.

To do this, we must master the art of retreat. Much of this understanding is compiled from military science dating back to Carl von Clausewitz. In the 20th century it was updated  by Mao Zedong, Võ Nguyên Giáp, Carlos Marighella, and others to strategize for guerilla struggle against enemies with apparently overwhelming numerical and technical power.

To understand retreat, we must place it in its context. Retreat is the opposite of advance. It is to withdraw and surrender some strategically valuable element to the enemy in order to preserve the integrity of one’s force or organization, or to gain a tactical advantage later. In the classical guerilla sense, this is often posed as trading ground (territory, space) for time. Retreat is often confused with defeat, but in actuality it is merely a tactic that sometimes accompanies a partial defeat. Retreat has its own characteristics apart from the question of victory. Retreat may accompany defeat, as a means of preserving an organization and staving off disaster. However, one may also retreat in victory. Not every victory is necessarily accompanied by an advance.

In this context, there are also several types of “ground” that may be given up. Identifying which “ground” will constitute a defeat (ultimate or interim) and which will constitute merely a strategic retreat is critical to enable us to make good decisions when we are engaged with the enemy.

For instance, in this current conflict between the student movement for Palestine and the agents of state repression (in the form of the hyper-militarized police departments), the most visible and obvious vector of advance and retreat is spatial. Geographic territory represents the primary field of conflict. The student movement has by and large pledged to “hold” space or territory on various campuses. Police advance on these encampments and threaten them.

However, there is also an organizational element of retreat and advance. The pressure exerted upon these encampments, although it takes the form of police advancing in the most visible sense, is actually not primarily for the purpose of physical removal. Rather, with all forms of pressure currently exerted on the student movement, the purpose is to disorganize them and break their will to continue resistance in any form. Physical incursion by the police or other elements is merely the most visible and sharpest example of this. Other examples include the “peace talks” held by some university administrations, which serve to sap the strength of the movement with false promises, and with which the administration hopes to induce disorganization.

While territory is not crucial — in Marxist terms, the contradiction of territorial control is a secondary one — organization is. That is to say that organization and dissolution is the primary contradiction, of which organization is itself the primary aspect. This means that the loss of physical territory is temporary and non-fundamental, but the loss of organization is permanent and mortal.

To put this in strategic terms: we can surrender any degree of territory without damaging our movement. Any surrender of organization whatsoever, any lessening in its militancy and preparedness, any action that tends to reduce the strength or complexity of internal relationships within a camp, is a clear defeat that must be resisted by all efforts.

When to Retreat

This is a complex question. For the purposes of the current analysis, we will deal with it in a very brief fashion. Firstly, we are not in a position of possessing a regular military capable of standing up to a war of attrition. Even the most radical student-organizers and Communists, in any conflict for the foreseeable future, must adhere to doctrines of a war of movement. We cannot hold any territory indefinitely. If the enemy wishes to deprive us of it, they will. Therefore, we must be fluid; we must retreat when the enemy attacks, we must attack when the enemy retreats.

In our instance, we are facing a numerically, technically, and logistically superior enemy. We are like a spindly man in a boxing match facing off against a musclebound Goliath. One punch from our enemy will flatten us, so when he gathers his strength and swings, we have to be somewhere else.

They also use the weapon of the capitalist court system, which we must avoid. The court is controlled by our enemy; the same class that sics the police on us commands every judge and prosecutor and has infinite money and time to spend prosecuting us. The old civil rights tactic of filling jails to paralyze the police is no longer viable, the enemy has learned from it and adapted. Every night in a jail cell is a blow to the organization. It’s a night you aren’t able to organize. It’s a night you cannot spend regenerating your energy. It’s a night that your people are deprived of your labor and your insight. This is how movements die. Their members are thrown into the dark or to years-long legal battles that keep them from the work.

Generally, when the enemy brings overwhelming force against you, to preserve the integrity of your own force, you should retreat. How will you recognize overwhelming force before it is already throwing your efforts into disarray? This question is composed of many smaller questions, each inter-related. For instance, if your organization is not prepared to make use of physical force to resist and hold ground, then it will be overwhelmed by an enemy prepared to make use of even a moderate exercise of force. When the police are unwilling to use force, even the minimal amount put forward by walking toward them in an ordered line with some protection will remove them. However, should they be willing to exert considerable force, only a very considerable defense would hold them off.

We should examine the following questions when we determine whether a physical retreat is correct:

Disposition of the Enemy

1. The physical makeup of the enemy force;
2. The morale of the enemy force, including what percentages are likely to be willing to continue fighting after heavy resistance;
3. The equipment available to the enemy force and an assessment of whether or not they are willing to use it;
4. The degree of violence the enemy force is willing to exert to achieve removal of the resistance;
5. The physical disposition of the enemy force in relation to your force;

Disposition of Resistance

1. The physical makeup of the resistance, including a sober assessment of the absolute number of reliable resisters, discounting those who will not remain;
2. The equipment available to the resistance and an assessment of whether or not using it will cause escalatory force; we must be aware that we lack a traditional military or even a widespread single organization — our enemy can always escalate to a level we cannot;
3. The physical disposition of the resistance in relation to the enemy force, whether the resistance has defensive ground, clear lanes of retreat, etc.;
4. A sober assessment of whether or not the resistance is willing and capable of using sufficient violence to match that of the enemy;

How to Effectuate a Retreat

Before a retreat is possible, there must be a clear lane of escape. For this reason, if defending a position, methods of retreat must be kept clear and open. If lanes of retreat are in danger of being closed off, then the time to assess whether retreat is necessary has come. You must begin your retreat before a cordon closes it off. All the better if you have access to a method of retreat unknown to your enemies.

The following principles will guide your retreat:

1. We must be prepared for retreat as a tactical option. This means that we must have contingency plans for the retreat and for what happens afterward. A retreat can become a true defeat if it transforms into a rout or if the organization does not reform. To pursue the strategy of retreat when they attack, attack when they retreat, we must set definite times for meetings after the retreat, to re-constitute or maintain the organization.
2. It must be orderly, or you risk a rout, disorganization, and complete disruption by the enemy. This means the least reliable elements must retreat first, before the situation is dire. In the case of a campus encampment, this means the marshals should first guide out those elements which cannot afford to be arrested. Then, the remainder of the encampment should depart, leaving only the marshals and self-defense committee to hold the line until they, too, retreat.
3. For those of us pursuing guerilla or semi-guerilla tactics, once the retreat from the area of danger has been effectuated, we must disperse to pre-arranged locations, dissolve, and lose our character as members of an organization. We arise from the civilian masses, and we return to the civilian masses. Once the retreat begins, organization becomes a secondary aspect and dissolution becomes the primary aspect. With these aspects in their inverse, you must separate, disorganize, and dissolve.
4. We must continue to avoid arrest. This may mean an extended period of retreat, or extended stays in an underground state without any above-ground agitation. Tactical retreat may necessitate the nail-biting withdrawal from the above-ground scene entirely. While the enemy runs rampant and controls the media narrative, the organization can begin to reconstruct itself, increase its scope with underground agitation, and prepare to strike once the enemy relaxes its attention.

You will hopefully see quite clearly that considerations of retreat cannot be left until the last minute. In fact, every action should be undertaken with an understanding of the plan for retreat. No single action will result in the defeat of our enemy. Thus, our strategic understanding must include retreat as a planned tactical maneuver in each instance. The question of when to retreat may be fluid, but many of the questions about how and where to retreat should be solved prior to the engagement.

Of course, it is also possible that these things may change during the action. If lanes of retreat become cut off, it may be necessary to open new ones. Plans must always be flexible. However, to have no calculation of retreat from the outset is to fall prey to the petit-bourgeois trap of revolutionary self-destruction. Do not self-destruct for the revolution. Live, and fight on.

Tonight is the night of the ram and the truncheon. The arm swinging it wears a Democratic Party armband. Push just a little against the ruling class, and they will band together in a slavering mass of ghouls and devils. We see you; the students and the workers see you.

To the conciliators: you have your choice. Stand with the people or with their enemy. To the ruling class: you have overplayed your hand. Tonight you have shown the students and workers of the cities your contempt, and treated them like the colonies and semi-colonies.

Look to Washington, and see them for what they are: the craven and cringing lackeys of wealthy masters. Look beyond their charade at the skin-and-bone; they are wearing your blood as rubies, they are slurping the marrow of your kin.

But what will their ram bring them? Their truncheon? Their armored trucks and towers? Tonight these cronies give birth to the future red brigades who will prepare on earth the hell that does not wait for them in another world – the hell they so rightly deserve.

Together, we will walk through the inferno to destroy them. They, the parasites who feast on our flesh and delight in our misery; who grow gravid with the wine of our suffering, will know fire, as we will know fire. And when we are done, the world will be the better for burning.

All it takes is a single spark – a single spark to start a prairie fire. They have struck the spark. The fire is burning. It will race beyond their control. The old wood will burn, the ancient groves will be cleared away, and the sun will shine again on a new forest.

The time is coming when we will bring their feast – the feast of two centuries! – to an end. We will drive the ghouls down into the dark corridors of history. Children will grow with only faerie stories of the monstrous exploiters. They will grow knowing them only as myth.

But when those children ask “where were you when the fire was struck” and “where were you when the fire raged,” you will look back and know that you took part. You will be able to say with sorrow and joy, “I was one who helped make this new world, for you.”

On the night of April 30 going into the morning of the first of May, May Day, the New York City police department piled into armored trucks and troop carriers. They went armed with batons and truncheons, with ladders, towers, and rams, to Columbia and CUNY, intent on shattering the resistance to the regime’s war on Palestine. In the nighted hours, before the rising of the sun, it became clear that the war is not the zionist war on Palestine, but the U.S. war. The representatives of imperial law and order stood together and declared with one voice, Democrat and Republican, from the mayor of New York City, the Democrat Eric Adams, to the trumpets of the White House and the Biden regime, that they are the unabashed servants of monopoly capitalism. Together all forces of “order” are lackeys of a single master: U.S. imperialist capital.

At the same time, across the country, UCLA’s encampment suffered attacks by paramilitary zionists: gas canisters, bricks, and lit fireworks were hurled into the camp, sending twelve student-radicals to the hospital. As we would expect, the police in LA stood back and permitted this brutal attack on the camp. Despite the violence, when the sun rose on May Day, the encampment had survived. The UCLA camp holds their ground.

Hours before the troops arrived at Columbia and CUNY, the student encampment at Brown was broken by the cowardice and capitulation of its leading committees, who chose to protect themselves rather than their mission, and broadcast an order to disband after the Brown made them empty promises of hearings on divestment…in October.

It is clear that this concerted effort on the camps was coordinated by a central strategy. We can see the hand of the White House behind the stooped pawns in blue. It is no mystery that Biden’s regime moves the pieces, even while Biden himself sipped warm milk and geriatric vitamin supplements peacefully in his cushioned bed.

In New York City, the NYPD closed off four blocks surrounding the Columbia campus. They marched in columns of armored officers, supported by a fleet of combat vehicles and jail buses, sometimes forcing patrol cars through crowds of students and workers, to approach the gates of the campus. In a crowning irony, student journalists were corralled and penned in Pulitzer Hall so they could not report on the brutality the NYPD were about to unleash on the defenders at Columbia.

Bringing up their siege towers, the NYPD forced entry to the defenders’ fortress at Hind (Hamilton) Hall, smashing through the windows and plowing into the defenders ranks. All told, some hundred or more students and workers at the encampment were arrested and shunted into prison buses to be transported to the city’s decaying prisons and lockups. The members of the encampment, with a high degree of political awareness, knew that despite the raid, they had won. Unlike the cowardly or duped leadership at Brown, they accepted nothing from the university, made no self-destructive bargain. Although they were ultimately arrested, the movement itself is in-tact and they can soon begin their work anew.

The Night of the Ram has shattered the domestic quiet of the empire. Crises are coming at an accelerating rate: between Ferguson and the 2020 June Uprising, eight years passed. Between the June Uprising and the 2024 Student Revolt, a mere four years have elapsed. We will see these crises come faster, with greater effect, and with ever-escalating crackdowns from the parties of law and order.

The bourgeois politicians in the form of the centrist and even the “progressive” Democrats have revealed themselves to the people as mere lickspittles for imperialist capital. They have let loose the dogs of war on their own people, treated the workers and students the very same way they treat the semi- and neo-colonies abroad. Cesaire’s thesis — the barbarization of the homefront with the savagery of the colonial front — has been proven true, even in the eyes of workers unaffected by the student movement.

Moreover, the Night of the Ram will inevitably produce hundreds of new radicals. From the wreckage of Hind Hall there will come the future red brigades, the theorists and armed battalions that will overthrow this unjust society which has, for too long, deserved annihilation. The days of capital are numbered, and the parties of law and order should tremble. The children of the revolution have raised their cry: I was, I am, I will be!