ART WEAPON: CORNELL PRO-PALESTINE STUDENT PROTESTERS DEFEAT CENSORS
OTHER COLLEGES CRACKED-DOWN ON PROTESTS, MORE THAN 400 ARRESTED NATIONWIDE
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This is a developing report. Check back for additional news.
Students at Cornell University used a cleaver ruse to defeat anti-Palestinian censorship and successfully set up a protest camp on its bucolic upstate New York campus in the dark, early morning hours on Thursday.
They used an outdoor art exhibit as a pretext to set up on a campus lawn, then simply stayed. They greeted the dawn with a slave folk song from the 19th Century American south: "We shall not, we shall not be moved. We shall not be moved."
The Cornell students join thousands of college students nationwide who have launched pro-Palestinian protests since 108 student-protesters at Columbia University in New York were arrested last Thursday after establishing a camp on Wednesday.
The arrests were requested by their school's president, Nemat Shafik. The City's mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, gave the go-ahead.
The Columbia students returned almost immediately and set up another camp. Despite repeated threats to send the NYPD back in, that camp entered its 10th day on Friday.
Meanwhile, protests have broken out at more than two dozen colleges across America, including its most prestigious. Not only Columbia but Yale, Brown, Harvard, MIT and now Cornell. More than 400 have been arrested nationwide.
They've also spread overseas and presently include protests at schools in at least four other countries.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott unleashed State Police on horseback to violently break up a peaceful protest on the University of Texas's flagship campus at Austin on Wednesday. Students confronted the mounted Troopers, chanting "We are not afraid!" More than 50 were arrested there alone.
Thursday morning, students at Emory College in Atlanta attempted to set up a pro-Palestinian protest camp but Republican governor Brian Kemp and Democrat Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens unleashed State Police and an Atlanta Police Department SWAT team to stop them. The SWAT team opened fire on students with pepperball guns. At least 17 were arrested.
More than a 100 student protesters were arrested at Emerson University during a midnight raid early Thursday morning. The city's mayor, Democrat Michelle Wu, ordered the Boston Police Department to make the arrests.
Pro-Palestinian camp-style protest at Cornell University. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
The pro-Palestinian student protesters at Cornell obtained a permit from school officials to place a pro-Palestinian art display on one of the campus's many quads, then set up tents along with the art at the same time their comrades elsewhere were being arrested.
Protesters established a group they named The Coalition for Mutual Liberation. They accused Cornell of being "financially complicit in Israel's campaign of destruction, genocide and ethnic cleansing through the investment of its endowment in weapons manufacturers and military technology developers."
They called on Cornell to divest from complicit companies, including cutting ties to the Jacobs-Cornell Technion Institute in New York City, which creates offensive weapons for Israel's military. They also demanded Cornell establish a Palestinian studies department.
"We will not leave until our demands are met," the students said in a statement.
Students were erecting additional tents, expanding the protest camp and calling on more students to join them Friday morning. They planned a teach-in at what they called "The Peoples' University."
Campus police passed by on patrol but did not intervene. Protesters were threatened with arrest and being expelled by Cornell officials if they did not leave, organizers told The Free Lance. Because pro-Palestinian protests are being falsely equated with anti-Semitism by supporters of Israel, the students requested anonymity and The Free Lance granted it.
Public relations personnel at Cornell have not responded to an invitation to comment.
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