Reporter: The campus police moved in before 5am and these protestors have been holding the line for over two hours. Christopher was on the inside when it happened. Describe what happened in the quadrant this morning.
Christopher: It was horrific. They waited like cowards until every single student was asleep in their tent basically. And then they stormed in, maybe 40 or 50 of them with riot gear, screaming, they started throwing wood planks, throwing chairs, throwing absolutely everything in any direction to destroy the camp as fast as possible, to suppress this movement as fast as possible. And, in fact, one of the chairs that they threw came within maybe three inches of hitting my girlfriend in the head, and they had just woken us up. I tried to make your everyone was safe. I mean it was chaos. It was terrifying.
They (administration) gave us some ridiculous notice out here, saying that participants in the quad encampment, which no longer exists, thanks to them, are facing an interim leave of absence as well as a criminal trespass charge. I have no idea if that’s just a scare tactic or if it’s real, but it doesn’t matter because the difference between us and people like these cops is that there are limits to continuing following orders. And when you are talking about a genocide visited upon a colonized population of two million people trapped in a ghetto that’s as long as a marathon and six miles wide…when that ghetto is systematically starved, slaughtered, every hospital bombed, every university bombed, 70 percent of homes destroyed, 40 thousand people murdered, 15 thousand people murdered, the entire population on the brink of starvation, we say, if our government and our academic institutions are complicit in this, there comes a point where we say, “we’re not following orders and it doesn’t matter what you do to us because there are principles and there are human lives that matter more than our careers and our futures.” That’s what separates us from people like Paul Alvisatos, the coward president of this university and these coward cops that come in terrorizing an encampment while people are sleeping.
What’s happening here…is that they (cops) are apparently trying to intimidate us, trying to suppress the protest that is continuing to grow. I think that they thought they could basically terrify us into inaction, into flight. This is what this university has never understood, has never accepted, has never reckoned with about the student movement—not only in UChicago but around the country—is that the commitment to Gaza runs deeper than fears for our safety, fears for our careers, fears for ours paychecks.
It is a fundamental obligation we have as citizens of a country that is presiding over this genocide, arming this genocide, and as students at a university that is invested in those same weapons manufacturers and that is partnered with the same apartheid institutions that train that military and develop its technology….
Reporter asks Christopher about his next steps:
The next step is a simple one. Whatever form it takes, which is to continue fighting with every breath we have, with everything we have for the people of Gaza because the blood of those kids is on our hands. It’s on all of our hands whether we like it or not. If we’re US citizens or if we’re UChicago students, we are implicated in this horror that is being visited with total impunity because of…Security Council vetoes.
Reporter asks: Are you a student?
Christopher: I’m a PhD student.
Reporter: If you face discipline, what then?
Christopher: Again, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. There are things that matter more than my academic future. Certainly every one of those children that is being murdered, starved, maimed, whose parents are having to choose (which child to starve first)…This is such an ugly reality of such great magnitude that to even think, to really entertain, questions about what might happen if Paul puts me on a leave of absence is ridiculous, and it’s insulting to the memory of every child that has been murdered in the course of this genocide with the full complicity of the United States, of Joe Biden, and of people like Paul Alivisatos and his cops [sent] in the middle of the night. They’re hypocrites. They’re cowards. And the blood of Gaza’s kids is on their hands too.
The difference between them and us is that we know that, and we reckon with it because we have a duty to them, while they hide from the truth. And they won’t even admit that a single university has been bombed.
"we’re not following orders & it doesn’t matter what you do to us because there are principles & there are human lives that matter more than our careers and our futures.” 📢
"the commitment to Gaza runs deeper than fears for our safety, fears for our careers, fears for ours paychecks." Our support for Gaza and those oppressed by settler-colonialism must be unconditional and unwavering or there is no support at all!