Women United Against Genocide issued this statement expressing solidarity with the campus protests calling for divestment from Israel and encouraging communities to provide material support.
Originally published by Women United Against Genocide.
Women United Against Genocide (WUAG) stands firmly in solidarity with the student protests growing on college campuses across the U.S. calling for an end to the ongoing U.S./Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, ceasefire now and divestment, especially from university support for arms to Israel.
We further condemn the use of armed police and any other armed forces being deployed against the student protests and encampments now proliferating nationwide from the east coast to the south to the west coast. More than 100 campuses across the United States have erupted with protests and solidarity camps. Inspired by the student movements here, these protests are spreading internationally as well from Canada and France to Australia. Students are being threatened with suspensions, expulsions and blocked from graduating, yet everywhere they remain firm and united in demanding an end to the Gaza genocide. Many also denounce militarization at home, such as students at Emerson in Atlanta standing against Cop City and the relations of Atlanta police with Israel’s military.
As threats by administrators and governors to use the National Guard are being made, the specter of the 1970 Kent State Massacre looms large where 4 students were brutally gunned down and 9 others wounded at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard while protesting the Viet Nam War. Eleven days following the Kent State Massacre, students at Jackson State University (then Jackson State College) were also gunned down by local and state police where 2 students were killed, and 11 others wounded. The Jackson State students were protesting issues of civil rights.
The suspensions, dismissals, cancellation of classes and commencement services, and police attacks against the student protesters as well as faculty on many of these campuses are acts of direct state repression that have been deepening and growing across the U.S. over the last several years against all forms of resistance to unjust laws and attacks on rights at home and abroad by this government.
As protestors supporting Palestine block arms shipments and students call for divestment from companies supplying arms to Israel, hundreds of students and some faculty have been arrested while the U.S. continues to send devastating weapons of mass destruction including 2,000-pound bombs that wipe out city blocks, cluster bombs, and other arms that target civilians and their homes and basic institutions, which are war crimes and violations of international law.
WUAG further decries the claims of antisemitism by President Biden, Congresspeople, and administrators as disinformation meant to divert from U.S./Israeli crimes and intimidate protestors who voice opposition to the genocide in Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and who defend Palestine’s right to self-determination. Jewish antizionists insist that they are not antisemitic and that Zionism is a catastrophe for Jews everywhere.
Finally, we call upon all communities to organize solidarity and support for the students and professors as they continue to resist state repression on campuses across the country. Communities can raise funds for the defense of those arrested, meet with university administrators and local leaders to demand amnesty for all students and faculty engaged in the protests, bring food and blankets to the encampments, and also picket in solidarity with the students against state repression and genocidal war in the Middle East. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago this August also looms large as a target of resistance to U.S. policies of unjust war abroad and state repression at home.
This week’s featured author is Ren Ellis Neyra. Elis Neyra is Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University. Their book is The Cry of the Senses: Listening to Latinx and Caribbean Poetics.
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