OPEN THE GATES!🔑

Columbia University knows our power is in the alliance of students and community. To maintain and extend it, we must end the blockade of this fortress of complicity!

"From Gaza to the US, we stand in unwavering solidarity with the Students for Justice for Palestine at Columbia University. We stand with the SJP members, Columbia students, and the protestors and their demands for Columbia to completely financially divest from the occupation entity." - Students in Gaza

We write to you from the grounds of Complicity University, where the spirit of solidarity burns bright despite relentless repression. Today marks nearly one week of continuous protests in support of Palestine at Columbia, after the university called in NYPD to make 108 arrests, in total violation of university policy and moral decency, and dismantle our encampment on the West Lawn.

We grieve the 34,000 Palestinians that have been murdered in Gaza, including the hundreds buried in mass graves at Al-Shifa Hospital. Filled with sorrow, rage, and hope, we reestablished our encampment this weekend, bigger and stronger than ever before.

A Week of Education and Liberation

In our attempt to establish a massive encampment capable of holding this space, every day we have held a continuous stream of teach-ins, musical and dance performances, film screenings, and democratic assemblies. We democratically established community agreements that ensure the safety of our solidarity community. We have held prayers, including a Jummah gathering where over 100 protestors came together, a Shabbat service, and a Liberation Sunday Service. As this email reaches you, many of us in the encampment are engaged in the celebration of liberation that is the Passover Seder.

There is no doubt that the vast majority of the Columbia community stands with us. Today, the Columbia College student body passed a referendum in favor of financial divestment with a resounding majority of 77% of votes, joining a raft of other statements for divestment. Hundreds of faculty, staff, and graduate student workers have walked off their jobs in solidarity with us and professors, parents and alumni alike have released statements calling for amnesty and divestment. Hundreds of admitted students visited the campus on Sunday, and despite Columbia’s shameful efforts to quarantine them in one building, many of them streamed into our camp to build with us.

New York City has the most powerful movement for Palestine in this country, and we have only made it this far because of allies in Within Our Lifetime, Palestinian Youth Movement, and autonomous supporters. Every day hundreds more stream in from the five boroughs and across the Hudson to rally at the gates. To them, our deepest gratitude.

The people in solidarity with Gaza across city have donated food, blankets, and tents to sustain our encampment. And just this weekend, a dozen other encampments have risen up for Gaza like flowers, including among our neighbors downtown in the New School and NYU. All of the universities, here in the imperial core, form a single chain, and if just a single link breaks…

The world is watching us and we will do our best to be worthy of it.

Arrests, Suspensions, Evictions Continue

The university has responded to this solidarity community of education and liberation with brutality and cruelty. Last week, the administration suspended all the students who were arrested, (over 50 Barnard students and around 40 Columbia students), based on the NYPD's arrest lists. These students must join the Columbia 5 and other students who have lost their homes in the last months for peaceful protest. Suspension for many means loss not just of education but also of housing, work, and medical care; many residents of student housing were given only fifteen minutes to pick up all their belongings and leave their homes.

Meanwhile, outside the gates, the police brutality continues unabated, as dozens of community members rallying in our support have been beaten and arrested for simply gathering in our support, with the full endorsement of Columbia University.

It is clear Columbia has nothing left to use against us except brute force, both physical and psychological. They have even reneged on their own promises in negotiations for amnesty, and are currently rolling out a new wave of discipline even as corrections buses pull up along West 120th street and riot cops assemble along Broadway.

The University’s Lockdown Strategy

As long as the Columbia community, the Palestine movement, and people of conscience across the world stand together with us, Columbia administration thinks twice about cracking down. Yet this moment is extremely dangerous, and arrests could be far closer than we think. They have developed a strategy to isolate us from our supporters and facilitate an even more brutal wave of arrests, and to sustain and expand our movement we must open the gates.

To try to destroy our encampment, Columbia has instituted an unprecedented lockdown, bolting shut almost all the gates and funnelling people to humiliating checkpoints. Journalists are locked out, professors can't get into their offices, classes are cancelled, honored elders are turned away, and every day the number of cops increases. Blankets, rain tarps, medications, and food are confiscated from backpacks. Information is slowed to a trickle, and their propaganda can proliferate, as people are prevented from witnessing the peaceful protest.

Their strategy is to turn the entire university into a single kettle, where, deprived of the lifeblood of the community, the stream of material support and the rallies of solidarity, we can all be swept once again. This time, they delude themselves, nobody will be watching, and nobody will help. And they will do all this in the name of safety.

ACT NOW TO BREAK THE BLOCKADE!

The only way to sustain this encampment, to continue to inspire actions across the movement, and to ultimately win divestment, is to open the gates.

We urge you to organize yourselves and act with the utmost speed in solidarity with our demands for transparency, divestment, and amnesty, as part of the struggle for the people of Palestine. Show the Columbia administration that until they disclose and divest, we will not rest. The time for the passive support of petitions and letters is past. Now is the time for disruptive tactions.

Students everywhere: rise up to take back your schools and universities!
Academics and teachers: walk out, withhold grades!
Columbia staff: send us information and support!
Columbia alumni: organize yourselves into rallies at the gates!
NYC area: assemble to defend the university encampments!

Following the 1968 student uprising, it took the university twenty years to recover financially from the sudden drop in applications, endowments, and grants. There is a price to be paid for supporting genocide, for suspending, evicting, and repressing students—together we must impose that cost.

There is no time to lose! This is our struggle to win or lose, and the time is now!

Contact: cuapartheidivest@gmail.com; cuapartheiddivest@proton.me