The time has come for all principled Marxists to engage directly with the student movement and aid it in its self-organization. The student movement  must now adapt and advance to address the new needs it has called forth. The state is using  a two-pronged assault on the movement: the first prong is the use of the legal repressive apparatus — the courts, the police, deportation — and the second prong is the use of the civil institutions acting  as state agents (in this case the universities) which are expelling, suspending, and revoking the degrees of student radicals.

As repression intensifies, it becomes clearer and clearer that we Marxists have not learned the correct lessons from the initial attacks on the movement (see our prior article, “Join the Student Movement!”). The movement must become organized to a high degree. Organization must develop in a particular direction and particular fashion to address the attacks the movement is now suffering.

That means the movement must develop to address:

• Organizational safety from the university system’s discipline;
• Physical safety from federal and state agents of repression (police, ICE, etc.) as well as paramilitary responses from private citizens;
• Anonymity of the leadership cadre and opacity of plans of action;
• Open lines of retreat after actions, and cessation of all action that results in identification or arrest.

To the purpose of addressing these issues, we have put together the following plans that Marxists involved in the movement should pursue. As always, we encourage to the strongest degree that any Marxists involved form separate, Marxist-Leninist organizations that are not directly integrated into the student movement and that can guide and coordinate the actions of the individual Marxists involved.

Organizational Defense Against the Universities

The universities are the second rank of defense for the state against the advent of student radicalism. In particular, elite universities like Columbia serve as the center of social reproduction for the ruling class, and thus are very concerned with the needs and demands of that class. These universities obviously have a class-character and a class-standpoint; their faculty are overwhelmingly high petit-bourgeois or bourgeois and their class standpoint is direct adherence to the haute bourgeois imperialists.

Despite the fact that they are “private” institutions, the university system is very malleable to the wishes of the government (and thus, the ruling class through its government agents). They have traditionally been the seat of reproduction for the reactionary vanguard, the CIA, and have always acted hand-in-glove with the state itself. Thus, we should not view the university system as separate from the state, but rather an extension of the state’s power into the social life of society. The university is the agent of the state. In this way, they act as machines of repression like the courts and prisons.

Columbia in particular has increased its repressive activities against student radicals: they have fired the leader of a student-worker union, issued expulsions, suspensions, demanded in-class attendance despite the threat of federal agents prowling the campus to deport radicals, private hearings with students, etc.

Defense against these tactics cannot arise spontaneously; it must be coordinated. The universities, as de facto agencies of the state, are too large and powerful to bend to pressure unless that pressure is exerted on a mass scale. Even the student population itself may be too small to draw the necessary concessions. Thus, the defense against the universities requires the utmost in organizational advancement and will also require the development of direct ties between the student-radicals and the masses of workers in their immediate area. Luckily, even the petit-bourgeoisie is likely to be outraged at the encroachment of the universities on the traditional “liberties” (as liberals understand them) of the students, particularly those who are members of the petit-bourgeois or bourgeois ranks of society. This represents a contradiction which must be exploited, a wedge which must be leveraged against the universities to the greatest degree possible.

1. Internal Solidification and Resilience

Resiliency is the order of the day. Withstanding legal or quasi-legal pressure requires resilience, specifically the organizational resources to ensure that everyone involved in the radical project stands in solidarity with one another. There are several components to a resilience of this type. The first is organization.

Organized groups are more resistant to repression. By organization, we mean a determined set of relationships and rules by which decisions are made and authority is delegated. The student-radical groups must be democratic, they must have defined membership, and they must have defined leadership and delegated channels of authority. This is the first step toward resisting the quasi-legal pressure being brought to bear by the universities.

This organization should then proceed to hold meetings with all involved and ensure that everyone understands the necessity of absolute solidarity. These meetings can boost morale, bring everyone on the same page as to strategy, and collect reports of issues being faced by the student-radicals.

The second component of this resilience is support. Once an organization is functioning, it must begin to garner material support for the radicals being targeted by the administration. This works in concert with component III of this proposal, the existence of Safehouses. In essence, those targeted by the administration should be assured of 1) housing, 2) income or essentials, and, where possible, 3) paid work. In order to achieve this, the organization should pool the resources of its individual members and solicit resources from outside in an effort to prepare for the necessity of material support. This should be done before it is necessary to draw on these resources, but that moment may be behind us.

2. Aggressive Legal Defense

The student-radical organizations must also prepare to strike back in the bourgeois courts with an aggressive legal strategy. The maneuvers currently being undertaken by the administrations are quasi-legal at best, and are subject to challenge. They can be slowed by entangling them in preliminary injunctions and litigation, particularly in federal courts where the local federal judiciary may be seeking to prove its independence from the central government.

This arm of the strategy should be carried out by trained movement lawyers who understand the necessity of militancy in the face of the current repression. We would recommend speaking with the National Lawyers Guild in detail about the potential for pro bono representation.

3. Prepare Plans for Tuition and Labor Strikes

The prior two stages should prepare student-radical organizations for the next stage of escalation: tuition and labor strikes. Unlike regular capitalist businesses, the universities have a flow of income that is independent from their labor-force. This often comes through the state apparatus itself (witness Washington’s attempts to interfere with Columbia’s internal operations by threatening to withdraw funding). However, there is a reliance upon both tuition and student labor in the allocation of university resources.

Tuition and labor strikes must be highly coordinated to be effective, and a large minority of student-workers and tuition-paying students must be prepared to expose themselves to the potential repercussions before they can be successfully carried out. However, given a high degree of organization, they can be extremely effective in bringing the administration to the bargaining table and forcing concessions. 

4. Connect with Unionized Workers on Campus

Other workers on the campus — faculty and staff — should be brought into the movement. Any student-radicals that are not yet in deep dialogues with the unionized workers on their grounds are cut off from the wider pool of labor solidarity and the above-listed labor strikes under C will be far less effective. The survival of the student movement relies on it connecting with the broader struggle of working people and uniting both of those struggles together.

At this stage, with many imperialist unions disclaiming Palestine solidarity, it is important that the student-radicals carefully assess whether the union leadership on their campus is friendly. If they are not, the radicals must bypass union leadership and instead establish connections directly with rank-and-file union members. They should be prepared to explain the manner in which the struggle of the student intifada is connected to the struggle of the unionized workers.

Student Self-Defense

In order to preserve their physical safety from state agents, the student-radicals must adopt modes of self-defense. We propose four steps or stages of heightening intensity to the student self-defense efforts:

1. Identifying the most vulnerable student-radicals;
2. Establishing a phone tree and lines of communication and warning;
3. Designating an on-call schedule for phone contacts; and finally,
4. Forming on-call defense brigades for physical confrontations.

1. Identifying the most vulnerable

The radical organizations, once fully formed, should reflect carefully on who is the most vulnerable to state action. Foreign nationals or anyone who could presumably be deported with a minimum of legal fiction should take precedence over others. Those who are being monitored by the state for any reason — plea bargains, court programs to get rid of cases, etc. — should also be considered. The organizations should privately draw up secret lists of those who must have the highest level of security.

2. Establishing the phone tree

An emergency phone tree must be established. Everyone in the organization should provide two phone numbers and at least one email address. The organization should then establish the call protocol in the case of any threat to an individual or group of student-radicals. Each person should have at minimum two other individuals to contact when an emergency begins. Once someone is contacted, they should immediately contact their listed “downstream” individuals. In this way, the entire organization can be alerted in very short order.

3. Designate an on-call schedule for the phone tree

Optimally, there will be one or two points of contact for the phone tree at any given time who make certain they are available. Anyone experiencing the threat of physical repression should call the on-call numbers; the on-call members may then communicate with the organization’s sitting body for self-defense to determine what actions are appropriate and then begin activating the phone tree. In most cases, physically assembling at the site of the emergency should be considered first.

4. Forming on-call defense brigades

Once the organization reaches a certain degree of development, the decentralized phone tree method should be transitioned to the formation and training of on-call defense brigades who can be called up to respond to emergencies. These defense brigades should be armed with some hand-held striking weapon (bats are a perennial favorite) and trained in defensive tactics. They will be called to rapidly assemble to sites where individuals find their safety threatened.

Safehouses/Underground

The student movement has called forth the need for a functioning underground. Those exposed leaders who now stand subject to vigilante threats or state action must have somewhere safe to retreat to until the crisis subsides. The construction of an underground now will provide the infrastructure for underground actions in the future and will heighten the degree of development of any student-radical organization.

We propose the following phases or schedule of establishing an underground:

1. Establish the network of safe locations available for long-term occupation;
2. Establish safe practices for moving between locations;
3. Prepare retreat plans for people who have been identified under II(1) above;
4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning.

1. Establish a network

This requires drawing up the names and addresses of everyone with space that can be used to hide people moving into the underground. A network of 5+ locations is required for this to be effective. These people must be trustworthy and developed, and must realize that they may be seriously inconvenienced for an extended period.

2. Establish safe practices for moving

The organization must establish a protocol for the safe transfer of radicals from safehouse to safehouse. This includes communication between safehouses (to be done in person at pre-arranged locations) as well as what physical routes will be taken and measures taken to obscure the identity of the people being ferried between safehouses.

3. Prepare retreat plans for those identified as most vulnerable

Everyone on the high vulnerability section of the organization’s vulnerability chart should have immediate emergency plans in place should they feel their safety is compromised, with predetermined signals and safehouses to arrive at.

4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning

No actions should be planned on any electronic media. All actions should be planned face to face and in person. Communication by digital media should be minimized as much as possible.

This is the Hour

We do not have much time. The student movement is under threat and must radicalize or it will be excised from the universities. Trained Marxists should endeavor to teach themselves the skills necessary to perform the tasks outlined above and should integrate themselves and offer their services to the student movement immediately. If you have resources or access to spaces that could be used as safehouses, you should make that known and contact student-radicals with that information immediately.

A luta continua!

Mahmoud has not been charged with any listed offense; his crime is his support for the Palestinian national liberation movement. Mahmoud stood against the slaughter of his people and the ongoing theft of their homeland. The fascist Empire is committed to worldwide terror and the enslavement of humanity. The state would rather us remain silent, going about our cleaved lives apathetic to genocide — this is vile and unacceptable. 

Free speech is dead. Did it ever exist in the first place?

Our free speech rights go about as deep as a puddle on the side of the road. The American Fourth Reich, aided by the skeletal Democratic party, has gutted what little was left of so-called “civil liberties” in this country. The U.S.’s liberal democracy was founded on the “rights” of only the white, slave-owning, and propertied classes, leaving everyone else, especially enslaved peoples, grasping for the shards of a deadened life.

Regardless of what the slave owners who founded this country may have intended when they wrote the Constitution in 1791, the settler-imperial government has never meaningfully valued free speech. Just seven years and one president later, the John Adams administration would pass the Alien and Sedition Acts: the Sedition laws criminalized any negative speech against the government, while the Alien Acts let the president deport any foreign nationals. Adams, who was a federalist, used the Sedition Acts to arrest journalists supporting his political opponents, the Democratic Republicans. The minute differences between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans are not terribly significant — (both supported the slavery of New Afrikans and the genocide of Indigenous Turtle Islanders) — suffice to say they were the two dominant tendencies of early USian politics. Adams lost the political battle; the Democratic Republicans won the next election and repealed the Sedition Acts. And the Alien Acts? They remain in effect to this day. The president may therefore deport any foreign national they consider to be dangerous, based on this 225 year old law.  In essence, dystopian state repression is one of the hallmarks of liberal democracy.

The Alien and Sedition Acts would be the first major crackdown on free speech, but they are not the last, nor the most recent. The Democratic-Republicans had their own opportunity to silence mass dissent a few decades later when the abolition of slavery became a contentious issue. In 1836, an Andrew Jackson-controlled Congress ratified a gag order banning any mention of abolition in the halls of Congress. 

In light of the modern national security state, first amendment rights are shallow.  With state surveillance and a history of interference in liberation movements, an American citizen’s speech may be free, but only so long as their words remain barren and removed from action. The Black Panthers, the Puerto Rican independence movement, the American Indian Movement: when nationally oppressed groups peaceably assemble, we can see time and time again that the First Amendment often has a selective application. Perpetual surveillance, state assassinations; sharpened knives which they are ready to use against any defiant organization. 

Before the regime will criminalize your collective expression, two circumstances must generally be met. 

1. The expression must be dissent, i.e., it must go against the regime’s foreign or domestic policy.
2. The expression must be popular. The degree of popularity can vary, but generally, the dissenting speech or collective expression must be popular enough for the regime to consider it a threat to its rule or the implementation of its policy. 

Popular dissent is forbidden.  

If this clownish blockheaded President is trying to weaken free speech rights on campus, he is late to the party. Colleges and universities across the Empire beat him to the punch by launching a full scale offensive against the right to protest before the Fall 2024 semester. Protests now have formal time limits. They are banned in popular gathering spots. Fascism on the Amerikkkan campus is objectively bipartisan. Trump’s threat is a promise to build upon the groundwork that was laid last year. Do not be scared. For fear is your greatest enemy. Now, we’re all able to see clearly without the blinding, twisted distortions of Democrats who use identity essentialism as bait in order to duplicitously rally support for their graveyard of a party, and therefore gut the very undercarriage of revolutionary understanding and action of the mass of vexed workers.

Saturday’s attack on student resistance was orchestrated by the regime’s use of the word “terrorist;” it is, by all means, a propagandistic term in the modern U.S., the same way “communist” was in the past, and is in the present. The state of course uses the veneer of a mythical “antisemitism” to justify its draconian measures. Claims of a phantasmal antisemitism from the very same administration that goes around giving Nazi salutes. Remember, the Trumpian gendarmes are the very same ilk that said “Jews will not replace us.” The very same people whose base committed a massacre in a synagogue,  now want to wage a “holy war,” which they pretend is for the very Jewish people they tried to mass murder. 

However, we must recognize that we’re in the depths of a revolutionary moment. The inflection points of class war are nearing a breaking crescendo, and it is up to us in the anti-imperialist movement to understand this dialectic of intense struggle and form a clear and firm guide to action. Now is the time to unite with left and progressive forces (While not compromising the proven Marxists analysis) to defeat the fascist juggernaut. In the age of techno-imperialism and the mass slaughter of our people, we must do away with the muddled Trotskyist tendency of splintering into groups of 50 (that has historically gutted the left in this country) and form a temporary alliance to defeat the strangling repression of the Trump regime. We, the mass reserved army of labor must pick up the red banner and fight for the liberation of all those colonized, imprisoned, and hyper-exploited. 

1. Financial Divestment

Divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine. Ensure accountability by increasing transparency around financial investments.

2. Academic Boycott

Sever academic ties with Israeli universities, including the Global Center in Tel Aviv, the Dual Degree Program with Tel Aviv University, and all study-abroad programs, fellowships, and research collaborations with Israeli academic institutions.

3. Stop the Displacement

No land grabs, whether in Harlem, Lenapehoking, or Palestine. Cease expansion, provide reparations, and support housing for low-income Harlem residents. No development by Columbia without real community Control.

4. No Policing On Campus

End the targeted repression of Palestinian students and their allies on and off campus, including through university disciplinary processes. Defund Public Safety and disclose and sever all ties with the NYPD.

5. End the Silence

Release a public statement calling for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza, denouncing the ongoing genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people, and call on government officials to do so too.

Columbia is the largest landowner in New York City. Its endowment totals $13.64 billion. The students of the encampment have compiled and distributed a chart showing how exactly Columbias Trustees directly profit from the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. 

The students of Columbia have learned the meaning of solidarity over the past year.  During a Palestinian “divestment now” rally in January, two pro-apartheid students, both former  terrorists in the Occupation Forces (IOF), attacked demonstrators using a chemical weapon. They sprayed activists with “Skunk,” a chemical developed by the zionist occupation and used for crowd control in the West Bank. As would be expected, the zionist NYPD has failed to make any arrests in connection with this attack. The school then took action against students who dissented against the genocide by “dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.”

The current protest began on April 17th. That same day, the campus administration threatened protesters with suspension and arrest, but no arrests were made. The University shut down the campus and blocked the entrances. They then called in the NYPD, who loomed in military equipment while hundreds of other students and community members stood in witness of their fellow classmates. Support protests for the encampment came together outside the school. 

As Columbia’s ruling-class administrators called on the jackbooted NYPD, members of Congress were questioning the administration about reports of so-called “antisemitism” on campus. As is typical for zionists, the hearing was bloated with the tired and putrid stance that anti-zionism equates to  antisemitism. “Inquiries” included the incredible question (which I am sad to inform you actually came out of a government official’s mouth in 2024) by Rick Allen (R-Ga.), asking “Are you familiar with Genesis 12:3?” Allen followed up stating “It was a covenant that God made with Abraham … If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If you curse Israel, I will curse you … Do you consider that a serious issue? I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God?” (The only consolation this writer currently has is that conservatives are at least saying the quiet part out loud. Though, these days it seems the most infuriating is watching Liberals feign concerned sincerity.)

School staff, who were primarily people of color and women, entered the encampment to try to negotiate its disbandment. This is not the first time we have seen the ruling class has chosen individuals from oppressed backgrounds and nations to use as a battering ram against their community. As professor Ruha Benjamin passionately stated in her recent Spelman Convocation 2024 speech: “Black faces in high places are not going to save us. Just look at the Black woman’s hand — [U.S. ] Ambassador at the UN — voting against a ceasefire in Gaza.” 

Initially it seemed that Columbia was willing to work with students towards a resolution. After meeting with students, the administration agreed that it would provide financial transparency for investments with the University Senate executive committee.

On the encampment’s second day, rather than working with the students, the administration set the dogs of capital, the police, upon their students. In the morning three students received an email notifying them that Columbia had suspended them, evicted them, and that if they remained on campus they would be arrested for trespassing. By doing this, the University immediately deprived students of their housing, belongings, education, meal plans, and health insurance. This was all done in service to Colombia’s profitable relationship with the genocidal ethno-religious settler-colony called “israel.” In the letter to the NYPD, Minouche Shafik claims that “I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University.”

Suspended students later received an email from Barnard’s CARES (Community Accountability, Response, and Emergency Services) that they had 15 minutes to gather their belongings.

It is worth noting that the mascots for capital acting as its agents in this showdown are the Muslim university president of Columbia, the Black mayor of NYC, and the Latino Chief of Police. Around 1pm the police descended on the encampment and arrested over 100 students and two NLG (National Lawyers Guild) Legal Observers while employees of the school took the student’s property and, in a move inspired by the state’s draconian treatment of houseless people, stomped on food and poured out water. 

The NLG Legal Observers, recognizable by their neon green hats, are frequently present at protests. They attend protests as a neutral party that is there to monitor and document police behavior towards protestors.

Columbia Administration and the NYPD have made concerted efforts to block the press’s access to the students, leading to the Columbia School of Journalism posting the following on their Twitter: “If you are a credentialed member of the media and have been denied access to campus, please send us a DM [direct message]. We will facilitate access to campus.”

The students suspended by the school were identified by the University as “leaders” of the encampment — which raises the question of how a private institution identified them.

All this from a school that offers an M.A. in Human Rights and courses titled: Indigenous Rights and Settler Colonialism in North America, Children’s Rights Advocacy, Gender-Based Violence and Human Rights, Refugees, Citizenship, and Migration.

Columbia hosts a “Center for Palestine Studies” which includes an Edward Said Archival Collection housed in a special reading room, a lecture series, and a research fellowship in Edward Said’s name. Said, the author of Orientalism, was a world renowned Palestinian scholar and a lifelong advocate. Surely, he is rolling in his grave as his image is used to repress the fighters for Palestinian freedom.

The current protest echos other student movements at Columbia including an anti-racism and anti-Vietnam War protest in 1968 where students had a weeklong standoff with police. Students held the dean hostage for 24 hours. Cops eventually  stormed the campus and arrested over 700 people. On April 4, 1985, “students chained closed the doors to Columbia’s administrative building, Hamilton Hall, and sat on the steps, blockading the entrance. They were there to protest the University’s investments in corporations that operated in Apartheid South Africa”. Within two hours 250 others joined the protest. On April 8th, with 5,000 students in attendance, Jesse Jackson made a speech at the encampment. The blockade lasted 21 days, ending on April 25th.

In another move of stunning cognitive dissonance, Columbia has this statement on its website about the 1968 protests:

“Columbia is a far different place today than it was in the spring of 1968 … The fallout dogged Columbia for years … Columbia now has one of the most socio-economically diverse student bodies among its peer institutions. It has added a new campus designed to be open to the community and pursues fields of inquiry unheard of a half-century ago. Columbia is commemorating the 50th anniversary of those long-ago events with a deep dive of scholarship and exhibits chronicling what happened then and its effects today.”

The police have used drones, helicopters, and hundreds of cops (derogatory) to surveil and detain peaceful students who in the words of NYPD Chief John Chell said the “clear and present danger” was identified by Columbia, not by the NYPD. The NYPD reported no violence or injuries associated with the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” “To put this in perspective, the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner,” Chell said. 

By April 22, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment had Community Guidelines. Which are:

1. We all commit to remain grounded in why we enter this space — as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people facing the deadliest year in a 75 year long, U.S. (and Columbia) -funded, genocide of the Palestinian people.

2. No desecration of the land, no littering. Please pick up your trash.

3. We recognize our role as visitors, and for many of us, colonizers, on this land. We camp with an acute awareness that we do so on colonized Lenapehoking land, which after being ethnically cleansed of its Indigenous population has experienced subsequent waves of racist displacement, including most recently by Columbia University in the displacement of the Black and brown Harlem community.

4. No drug use/alcohol consumption inside the camp.

This may make people uncomfortable, increase risk of police targeting, and ultimately this camp exists in service of Palestine, and “partying” in such a space would be an offense to the cause that has brought us here. If people would like to smoke, they can do so outside of the lawn. We don’t want to police each other or each other’s patterns of substance use, but want to ensure that people feel comfortable in the space.

5. Respect personal boundaries — tight quarters are not an excuse to cross physical boundaries without Affirmative consent.

6. We commit to never photographing or videotaping another community member without their affirmative consent.

7. We commit to not share the names or details of anyone we meet in this camp space with someone in the administration as we realize they could be targeted and this could cause them great harm. We keep us safe, that includes refusing to comply with any demands if the NYPD, private investigators, or Columbia admin try to force us to disclose the identities of any of our fellow students!

8. We commit to assuming best intentions, granting ourselves and others grace when mistakes are made, and approaching conflict with the goal of addressing and repairing.

9. Please think of community members when making decisions about autonomous action. Not everyone has consented to the same levels of risk, but everyone will be affected by decisions that community members make. 

10. We commit to not engaging with zionist counter-protestors. They seek to distract us, and we must remain steadfast and unified.

Cornell West, Susan Sarandon, Norman Finklestein, and Chris Smalls have all made appearances and encouraged the students. While encouraging, it is important that this movement remains self-governed and is not co-opted by outsiders and moderates. 

Arresting over 100 students has backfired on Columbia. While the arrests were taking place, other students moved to a different campus lawn to set up a new encampment. Protests in solidarity with the students have spawned around New York City. The University of North Carolina launched their own encampment protest, as has Yale, Emerson College, MIT, Tuft University, U.C. Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. Miami University in Ohio held a solidarity demo. Boston and Harvard University held walkouts. Student actions continue to spring up all across the U.S. and have jumped the ocean to include similar actions in the U.K. and Australia. 

In the face of intense state violence and academic sanctions the Columbia student’s encampment is still going strong. However, in order to achieve their aims and express true solidarity with Palestine, the encampment must escalate towards revolutionary militancy. This means occupying more than the designated lawn. Most importantly, the groups who organized the encampments must become politically organized, and form democratic committees to resist all co-option, capitulation, and destruction of the encampment. Only by becoming organized can the student movement forge itself into a weapon of revolutionary action, and deal the university administrators and the zionists a devastating blow.