The Panthers were right. Revolutionaries should be armed.

If I recall correctly, the tenet was that every movement needs a non-violent faction and a radicalized faction. The non-violent faction is the carrot to the radicalized faction’s stick. A comparison might be labor unions: unions are supposed to be a reasonable compromise to managers not getting dragged out of their houses and beaten to death in the middle of the night (or assassinated in other ways). See: Renault CEO Georges Besse.

Unfortunately, so many pro-citizen, pro-labor movements have been overrun by the “strictly non-violence!” mindset and thereby defanged. Additionally, we’re the labor, for fuck’s sake! We could absolutely hit every oligarch and politician right where it hurts, yet here we are.

You’re not wrong, but if they had been armed, there would be more dead people in this story.

However, the steady escalation from peace is good. When it eventually gets to violence, people can point back and go, “We tried peace, they kicked our faces in. They started the escalation, we’re just responding in kind”

We know where the neoliberal stands. He stands on the side of power.

Quiet! They’re gonna label you a trump supporter.

I don’t know why this is downvoted. I guess people just have believed the neoliberal lie that peaceful protest accomplish anything. Things get accomplished when there’s violence. The reason you aren’t all locked onto an assembly line in a factory somewhere from age of 8 to 80 is because your ancestors had guns and fought. It wasn’t peaceful. There was a war we fought.

The protestors shouldn’t be breaking into buildings and barricading themselves in them.

I really have not noticed that it is Islamic/tankie people per your words, but rather just everyday people who hate to see others getting killed be it Jewish people or Palestinians. I know I fall into that camp and just wish for the violence to stop. If you read the comment history of most here, there is no evidence of the types you claim outside of a small %. You have to look to know.

Maybe, just maybe, the stats you read saying nobody gives a shit, were completely fucking wrong. 👍

So perhaps you care little about the Gaza conflict, why are you calling out other people for caring? I suppose less people should care because, ‘islamic’? Your ‘stats’ are doubtful, the impact the protests have had is greater than it’s been for many, many decades.

People who talk about ‘stats’ all the time forget, or very well know, that statistics is both art and science. Often the realm of self-serving or misguided intellectuals or marketing depts. This is not some science experiment.

I recommend watching the documentary “Fog of War”, and pay attention to Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us.

These protests have a list of specific demands, especially a demand to divest Columbia’s money from arms manufacturers supplying the genocide. Do not infantilize this. It is an organized maneuver with a specific goal.

They are protesting the University’s investments in Israel……

I’d like to present this piece of evidence: MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail! In particular, I believe this section is most relevant:

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

I have been trying to verbalise this for a while. Thank you for this comment, it’s a perfect explanation and precisely encapsulates how I feel about these protests.

I agree with their intention, but they’re not actually helping their cause.

Breaking and entering has never been a form of protest that’s acceptable. At this point the protest has just devolved into doing everything they can to get arrested like that.