Timeline of the Gaza Solidarity
Encampment Wave & Campus
Flood at UC. Berkeley

CASEY Growav

FROM MV PERSFFCTIVE APRIL To TUNE 2024
illustrations from Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestnian Resistance

with whatever weapons at hand

Contents

Introduction
a

‘Timeline of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment Wave
& campus Flood at U.C. Berkeley
s

“Bay Area Autonomists Reflections on UCB, SFSU, and USF Camps”
15

“Bonk: University of California Office of the President Attacked”
1w

“A Response to ‘Hind’s House is Wateen's House is Ahmed's House is
Mahmoud’s House...”
20

“Student Intifada as our Historical Duty: Fulfill it or Betray it”
2

“Operation Campus Flood: Call for a Week of Autonomous Action on Bay
Area College Campuses for Palestine”
2

“UCLA Students Were Attacked Last Night So We Retaliated
With a Firebomb on UCB Campus”
29

“retaliation arson attack on construction site
at university of kkkalifornia berkeley”
30

“The Student Intifada”
a2
Introduction

Resistance is a choice made with a knife at the throat. Beneath every
question of historical agency, concrete conditions, organizational
capacity, or theoretical acuity there's this:a choice. Poised on the
precipice before which is passivity in the face of totalizing death, despair,
destruction and beyond which is struggle against it, to make this choice is
tooffer aslight chance within the continuous history of an ending world

in order to end it. This choice—resistance—is not one made lightly, nor is
it made once, for once you make it you must constantly remake it, holding
steadfast to the horizon against all the repression in the world that seeks
to vanquishaall revolt.

‘The horror we feel each waking day about the us/zionist-led genocide in
Palestine ensues not from the sheer extent of death, the magnitude of the
massacres, and the breadth of annihilation to which we bear witness.
Rather, this terror emerges from the stains in our souls, we who continue
tolive (ifyou can call this a life) only because it is us who allowed this to
‘happen, who continue to allow this to happen, who haven' collectively
brought this to an end. The horror we feel each waking day arises from the
foreclosure of the brief glimpses of the dreams of rebellion that have
vanished, disappeared, or dissolved. When we forget that resistance is still
possible we are doomed, we disappear.

‘The mass movements comprising the Palestine solidarity movement in
amerika have failed. From the so-called “student Intifada of proliferating
campus oceupations to the mass “non-violent” blockades of A15, from
interminable peace-policed marches to nowhere to the “organized left’s”
commitment to legitimacy and legality, isolating militants to protect
themselves—all of these brief glimpses of mass resistance to genocide
have failed—decisively. What their failure reveals is how deeply
‘embedded this genocide is with the amerikan project of imperial
domination, thus also revealing how all institutions that remain engaged
in amerikan state-building (non-profit, student, progressive, and electoral

organizations) will be compromised from the start.

Repression works in two ways—with all the violence of the world
(massacres, concentration camps, prisons, and police) and with fear and
forgetting through which we repress ourselves. Each time the solidarity
movement came upon the choice of resistance and chose passivity instead
of struggle, each time the solidarity movement came upon the choice of
resistance and chose safety, legitimacy, and stability instead of struggle,
each time the solidarity movement condemned the resistance to protect
themselves—fear took the place of guns and forgetting took the place of
cages. So repression prevailed, recuperating struggle in the name of
imperial domination.

Yet, we must remember that this “we” is not all of “us.” Resistance
continues daily in clandestine flames, in underground shadows, in secret.
Resistance continues daily amidst the ruins of an annihilated Gaza. As
long as the resistance isn't defeated (and maybe even then), fedayeen
continue to tunnel through the rubble to attack the zionist forces of
devastation, even when the ground trembles and the sky shakes.
Resistance continues daily behind the walls of all the prisons in the world.
For even when it seems that life is impossible, that the dreams of rebellion
have disappeared, that the desire to revolt has vanished, we must
remember that as long as we still have prisoners, nothing is ever over.
‘When asked how we know that resistance is still possible, we respond
with the example of our prisoners. We remember them. We carry on their
fight. To forget them s fatal, for they are our memory.

To combat amnesia, we must remember that we are at war, “seeking
conflict with those responsible for the genocide, our bare hands around
their throats.” Repression must breed resistance.

These words are from one of the many communiqués published below in
political prisoner Casey Goonan’s “Timeline of the Gaza Solidarity
Encampment Wave & Campus Flood at U.C. Berkeley.” Published under
the varying signatures of “some anarchists,” “Sacred Black & Red,”
“Leila’s Daughters,” “Safiya’s Daughters,” “Marilyn's Daughters,” or
“Blessed Is the Flame,” each speak o the necessity of resistance and its
enduring possibility in an invitation to all of us on the precipice of the
choice we have not yet made to join them. Casey’s timeline is itselfan act
of revolutionary memory against amnesia, revealing under the totalizing
inertia of inaction those slight chances for revolt, those slim possibilities
of rebellion we can still pursue. Casey’s timeline is also an act of counter-
repression, counter-history, revealing the creative militancy of our not-
et cohered but still cohering underground.
Casey s the only political prisoner from the 2024 wave of encampments
and campus flood for the liberation of Palestine. They are an abolitionist
and anarchist who has dedicated themselves to all struggles for liberation
and who for years has been deeply involved with and committed to
prisoner support work and direct engagement with incarcerated
comrades. They've always pushed to ensure an understanding of Black
struggle and revolt as central to their abolitionist work and through this
understanding the importance of anti-police and anti-prison struggles in
any and all efforts towards liberation.

In June 2024, they were arrested by a task force comprised of the FBI and
other law enforcement agencies in connection with an alleged direct
action which took place in solidarity with the uc berkeley encampments
which had been brutalized by police and zionists carlier that year. Casey
insisted on taking a non-cooperating plea deal in which they plead guilty
to one charge to allow additional charges to be dropped, not including any
information or testimony against anyone else. Though Casey has received
agreat amount of support from decentralized and autonomous
movements, the pro-Palestine movement as a whole and all other
autonomous liberation struggles need to publicly and actively support
them.

As the call for action “#FreeCaseyNow: On Casey Goonan and the
Abandonment of Political Prisoners in the Pro-Palestine Movement”
articulated, “despite vague assertions of the interconnectedness of
repression and struggles between the amerikan policing and prison
apparatuses to that of israel, there has been little material manifestation
from that understanding within the us pro-Palestine movement.
Meanwhile, coordinated struggle between prisoners and outside militants
has been a key point of success for Palestinian liberation.”

Beyond the bare minimum of supporting those facing repression, the call
toaction continues, “any revolutionary horizons with teeth require long
term prisoner support. This practice s key to the current struggle that led
to the Al-Agsa Flood as exhibited by the rich history of organizing within
prisons and the ongoing liberation of those being held hostage by isracl.
‘Those of us living under a plantation economy already have our own
reasons to ensure incarceration is a central site of struggle. But if one does
insist upon taking guidance from elsewhere and if one intends to ‘bring
the Intifada home’ or ‘escalate for Gaza,’ Palestinians have provided

.
plenty of methods for how carcerality can be attacked.”

“Casey understood this prior to their incarceration and there’s no doubt
this knowledge influenced their own political horizons. If the pro-
Palestine movement wants to also tote itself as an intifada they should
take note of the militant organizing and support infrastructure within and
between prison walls that occurs in Palestine. Abandonment of prisoners
is where revolutionary ideals die.”

State repression must be met with expanding our community resources
to reach those inside. Bravery must be met with support.

Our prisoners are the compass of any of antagonistic movement for
liberation, since it s from them that we can learn how to make the choice
of resistance and hold fast to the slight chance of a future it trespasses
into the world of death and despair. As “Sacred Black & Red” articulate
below, “Resistance is our historical and spiritual duty. To not hold this as
truth is to give up and accept defeat, hoping someone else will do what it
takes to disrupt the flow of capital into the settler-colonial project. We
must bring the war home.”

For the children of Gaza
Forall the martyrs

‘With eternal revolutionary spirit

Let us break open the prison gates at last

Blessed is the flame that burns down the settler-plantation

Free Casey Now
Timeline of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment

Wave & Campus Flood at U.C. Berkeley

/////f //
N\

47— Columbia Univer
encampment begins.

/22— Cal Poly Humbold:
escalates with building,

takeover

UC Berkeley encampment

begins.

4129 — Columbia encampment is
threatened with the possibilty of
asweep.

An autonomous group that night
seines and takes over Hamilton
Hall,renaming it Hind's Hal.

ey Ay ey

418 — Columbia camp raided by the
police, mass arrest of 100+ students.

Encampment quickly rebuilds with
community support, larger number of

non-student / non-campus. workers
join.
[Quickness of effort 1o rebuikd the

camp s factorin both the capacity of
the action to boost morale and shift
momentum momentarily in favor of
the Palestine solida

iy movement.]

4126 — True Leap Press begins
tabling zines and propaganda
At UC Berkeley, delivering
boxes of zines to every Bay
Area campus encampment s
well s Humbolds and UCLA.

[Upwards of 3,000 zines were
printed and distributed during
the fist two weeks of the
encampment wave]
4/30 — Humboldt encampment and
building takeover is Faided, disbands.

On the same day Hind's Hall at
Columbia s rided.

UCLA encampment is attacked in the.

evening by Zionists and fascists. —

entity begins
“Rafah Offensive’

[Bearing witness 1o this via
livestream is what leads Casey 1o
‘permanently join the UCB camp.]

e S e s S WY

S/ — Casey begins
stayingin UC Berkeley
camp, after a night of

defense work declares,
“'m staying. I'm on 5/3 — Radicals involved in UCB camp

strke from lfe” assemblies and day-to-day _life
publish and circulate a position
paper, ttled: *Bay Area Autonomist
Reflections on UCB, STSU, and USF
camps.”

Frustrated with the reformist
negotiation approach, they launch an
important critique, noting a “power
vacuum” in the encampments that
the reformist and and activist “Lefi”
opportunistically fils.

/11— Casey still lving in camp,
weekends _involve intensive
work in the camp, becomes
exhausted and atrition Kicksin.

shs — UC Berkeley
By this time, many radicals encampment ends prematurely.
stopped attending camp and controversially to the fault
assemblies which cedes ground of o-called “student
further 1o reformists and the leadership” and its enablers

activist Left from the actvist Lt

5/13 — Casey taken to hospital,
calls doctor a racist afier
Zionist comment is made about
participation in UCB camp.

As a result Casey i wrongfully
51504 involuntary peychiatric
hold/ incarceration).

ey Ay ey

sz — Casey leaves

camp due to exhaustion,

injuries and stress.
5/13 — University of California
office of the President attacked,
with a communiqué and
responsibilty claim published by
“Sacred Black and Red”

[Communiqué posted on 5/14 calls
for_expropriation and greater
escalation, for “attack”]

/16 — UC Berkeley building
scited and_ tuken over by
approximately 60 people,
renamed Hind's House.

UC Berkeley supply
ing expropriation over
night, thousands of dollars
in materials are liberated by
an unknown group,

e S e s S WY

/19 — UCB Hind's House raided
by police,arrests made.

1t casily raided because lack of
community support by local

millives and less student s29 — Palestinian student
partcipation in the _building association in Gaza publishes callfor
takeover than the encampment | greater cscalation from US-based

students, titled “Its time for

revolutionary escalation of the global
student intifada for Paestine.”

5/20 — Casey in released
from psychiatric faclity

/30 — UC Santa Cruz
encampment standoff
at might with police,
eventually kettled and
arrested en mass.

6/12 — UCLA encampment
is raided and attacked by
the police arrests made.

61— UC Berkeley
police caris firebombed
around 4 -5 AM.

An open space on the
North side of UCH
campus i arsoned
around 10 P,

ey Ay ey

62— A communiqué i published and
circulated, laiming the UC police car
is torched as retalition for the police
atack on UC Santa Cruz, titled
“Student Intifada a3 Our Historical
Duty: Fulfil It or Betray 11"

Sa1 — Statement published
and circulated on the Hind's
House buiding takeover, wi
an affirmation of the effort and
a critique of the lack of
community support to defend
the action, titled “A Response
to Hind's House Is..”

613 — UC Berkeley's Koshland Hall
building front s firebombed in
retaliation for the police atiack on
UCLA encampment

A communiqué explaining the atack
published, tiled, “UCLA Students Were
Attacked Last Night $0 We Retalated
with Fircbomb on UCB Campus.”

/17 — FBI, ATF, California
Fire Marshall, UC Police
Department conduct o
multi-house raid and arrest
Casey, who is taken 1o
Santa Rita Jail in Dublin,
California and held on o
millon dollar bail

e S e s S WY

10— A call for grester
participation from the Bay
Area Palestine _ solidarity
movement in“Operation
Campus Tlood" is published
and circulated in print and

616 — Construction site at the center of
online (34 page pamphlet) co- UC Berkeley campus is arsoned in the
Sined by Lolus Daughters middle of the day, to retaliate against the
Saftya's | Doughters, - and government and UC system's support for
Marilyn's Doughters. the lsrael-Zionist_entity, for the UC’s

treatment of student protestors, and for
the UC's decision 1o sweep houseles
people in People’s Park and build student
housinginis pace.

A responsibility claim is published by
Marilyn's Dax

Arson Attack on Construction Site at
University of KKKaifornia Berkeley.”

Bay Area Autonomists Reflections on UCB,
SFSU, & USF Camps

by some anarchists
May 3,2024

we are numerous. we have no name, no body, no beginning, and certainly
no end. this isa call, a reflection, a promise that we will find each other. we
are the spark to an uncontainable fire.

in recent weeks, we've watched the new bay area (quite different from the
one we grew up in) join the student movement to call for an end to the
ongoing genocide in gaza. uc berkeley, san francisco state university, and
university of san francisco are as of now the three local campuses where
student-based encampments have launched. this reflection touches on the
same concerns which autonomous folks from other regions, notably our
comrades at ucla, have shared.

without going into specifics for the federal agents reading, there have
been numerous attempts for autonomy and escalation for gaza stifled by
the university sanctioned cowards and the alphabet boys. we understand
the majority of our fellow students and fellow young people are learning
this shit on the fly and taking their first steps towards fighting for
liberation. however, we understand there is something of a power vacuum
that opens when students look to those with experience. the “organizers”
who step in during these moments tend to be paid actors, pouncing to
push their liberal compliance on students who then see these teachings as
gospel. we see this as a threat with a history, a context, and deeply
infected roots.

we are in the bay area, with its own unparalleled history of black radical
tradition, a center-point for the occupy movement,a bright fire burning
from grief for oscar grant. the bay is the hub of countless
counterinsurgent agencies — mostly nonprofits — many of which began
preying on our people in the aftermath of these organic moments in time.
the united snakes government fears black rebellion, and all rebellions so
inspired and shaped. as we witness the attempted defanging of this
critical moment in time yet again, we hope to impart this critical context
on the readers. the united snakes has pushed the nonprofit system, its
affiliated counterinsurgent dogs, and the associated colonial tech “gold.

rush” into the bay area as a way of preemptively stamping out the
specters of rebellion which haunt them. to the state agents reading this,
both paid and unpaid, we have one word for you: boo!

‘we urge students, youth, all our beloved outside agitators to just say no.
this movement does not belong to organizations. this movement does not
belong to individuals. all moments in time belong not to one but to the
numerous and the nameless. now is the time to pour gas on the fire and to
push the fuck back. to all the students who are taking their first brave
steps in this world, we are so fucking proud of you. keep asking questions,
Keep finding each other, keep putting pressure. you are not alone, and this
is just the beginning.

www.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/05/03/18865767.php.
Bonk: University of California Office
of the President Attacked

by Sacred Black and Red
May 14, 2024

“The beginning of every revolution
order that power has enshrined in the name of law, stability, public
interest, and the greater good.”

~ Basel al-Araj
‘With the Aurora Borealis above us and the martyrs in our hearts, we
attacked the UC Office of the President in solidarity with the Palestinian
Resistance. Using a fire extinguisher filled with red paint we covered the
facade and smashed seven windows. Then, with access to the building, we
released 500 cockroaches inside and emptied a second fire extinguisher
onto the ‘We finalized the act by leaving a water jug
with “Bonk” at the scene — an homage to the militants of Cal Poly
Humboldt and the international student encampment movement.

As anti-colonial anarchists and communists we offer this act of material
and spiritual solidarity with the hopes of shattering the illusion that
resistance is limited to a single site.

As Moten says “THE ONLY POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIP TO THE
UNIVERSITY TODAY I8 A CRIMINAL ONE.” The University’s true fascist
form has been put on full display, and hiding behind hollow progressive
ideals is no longer an option for the dead-eyed desk killers. Abolish the UC
showed us in 2020 that the University of California is nothing more than a
settler colonial project, that their police are protecting the gates of colony,
where knowledge is produced and captured by the State to only digits
claws deeper into the flesh of Indigenous lands here and abroad. Let us
not forget the UC became co-ed to breed settlers and populate the west
coast. Speaking only to the UC's material connection to the Zionist entity
obfuscates the extent of the political, theoretical, and cultural
entanglements between the UC and the Israeli State. The University does
not simply fund Israel, it creates Isracl, and launches this white-colony
into the post-modern Empire. What does divestment mean when the very
essence and foundation of the institution is a fascist regime? Where does
Zionism begin and end in the University of California? Is divestment an
oxymoron? The UC must be abolished.

The “working-class” public colleges are not safe from eritique (nor attack).
Some of the resulting encampments have established themselves as
outposts of nonprofits and NGO loyal only to funders; moved by
professional partnerships and personal brands. Revolutionary struggle
and its legacies have been co-opted, deradicalized, and professionalized
through identity-driven liberal pedagogies. By teaching a revisionist
history that renders liberation movements compatible with capitalism,
university-deputized counterinsurgents erase and demonize militant
forms of struggle while smugly promoting an inert philosophy of
nonviolence and respectability. This is one of many reasons why, although
divestment is a valid and tangible baseline demand, our long-term focus
should not be on reforming and reaffirming these institutions, but rather
on resource expropriation and fucking them up irreparably.

Across Bay Area university encampments and police-liasoned street
mobilizations, escalation is consistently policed by weaponized liberal
anti-oppression politics or crushed entirely by the fear of risk. Perpetual
‘hand wringing over what could happen obscures what can be achieved.
Attempting to shape a militant movement into something that will never
have to contend with repression is to abandon the pursuit of
revolutionary ends. The attack on UCOP began with an ask: how can
political analysis be articulated through attack? An effective operation
begins with the needs of the struggle, the goals of the cadre, and its
limitations. Threat assessments should remain realistic and specific to the
actions being carried out. Within the American empire, what is solidarity
with the Mujahideen of Palestine and militant student movements if not
shapeshifting into a political fighting force?

‘We join the chorus calling for escalation in the imperial core: escalate,
escalate, escalate! This is our historical and spiritual duty. To not hold this
as truth is to give up and accept defeat, hoping someone else will do what
it takes to disrupt the flow of capital into the settler-colonial project. We
must bring the war home.

“Let them do their work because there is a manhood in that work
‘which we will one day transform into holy struggle, and as long as the
colonizer wants to kill our souls, these people are closer to God and to
thelove of holy struggle than are those who submit.”

— Sheikh 12z ad-Din al-Qassam
For the children of Gaza
For the martyrs

‘With eternal revolutionary spirit
Break open the gates

wwiw.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/05/14/18866217.php
A Response to “Hind’s House is Wateen's House is
Ahmed's House is Mahmoud's House...”

May 31, 2024

‘We hear your call and are with you. We heard your call the day Hind
House was occupied, and were with you that night. As the police moved in
we were gathering friends to defend the house, because that is what you
had asked for. We are still gathered.

‘We agree that we are at war. The current way of things s a never ending
genocide, a catastrophe. And we seck conflict with those responsible for
the genocide, our bare hands around their throats.

Hind’s House, Wateen’s House, Ahmed’s House, Mahmoud's House,
‘Oscar’s House, Banko's House, Aaron's House ... is not, in our minds, an
end, or the end. Actions open new possibilites. There are many rooms to
make. We've never forgotten any of the martyrs. We hope to find you as
we act. We hope to take many rooms together.

You said everything that needs to be said about activist counter-
insurgency in the Bay. We have no words for them, as you said, they do
the fascist's work for them, treat them as such.

We do have words for some people we'd call friends, or comrades:

Do not get stuck in your own projects and small circles, do not fail to act
together. We are stronger when we do. There was an opportunity to
defend the house the night it was taken, ll together. Where exactly were.
some of you? An opportunity for escalation, for new possibilities. And, we
were asked to come.

‘We think the house got rolled on so quickly because there were not
enough people nitially there to defend it. The cops saw that and moved.
‘We watched them as they scoped the sich out.

‘We think we can both act all together in important moments and remain
committed to the everyday projects we admire you all in 50 much.
Capacity, recovery, strategically moving is one thing, hesitation and
comfort is another.
There is nothing to wait for in this moment, there has never been
anything to wait for. Again, we hope to find you all in action.

inlove,
some fucking people

wwiw.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/05/31/18866842.php
Student Intifada as our Historical Duty: Fulfill it or Betray it

June 6,2024

Around 4am on June 12024, an incendiary device was placed below a UC
Berkeley police vehicle parked in front of UCPD station. The device was lit
underneath the back left wheel of a police SUV, placed between the tire
and underside of fuel tank. There were too many people around at the
time to see the final result. Unsure ifit caught the tire and fuel tank. But
the device has enough fuel in it to torch the entire car if it was
successfully placed.

“This act was done in retaliation against UCPD, for their attack on students
yesterday ona different campus and o retaliate against the University of
California for its support for the zionist israel settler colony. More.
specifically - this attempt to torch a police car in front of the university
‘was in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings assaulted by the zionist
state in Rafah. It came from a place of love for Palestine, and love for
revolution and liberation of all oppressed people.

This act was:

In solidarity with the students attacked by the fascist police state at uc
santa cruz. In solidarity with the students attacked by zionist street
collaborators at uc los angeles. In solidarity with the uc berkeley students
seizing the time and taking back Hines Hall

with the resistance axis for Palestinian life, liberation, and
total decolonization of the zionist occupied lands. For an end to the
genocide of our beloved Palestine, and an end to the anti-Black and
colonial genocide destroying our loved ones here.

Alife worth living is lfe in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings, who,
face down the settler’s scope with every movement, or every day. A life

‘worth living s a life in solidarity with the Ohlone people. We continue to
return the land with this offering, A life worth livingis in solidarity with
our Black and Brown siblings continuously surviving and thri the
face of genocidal state violence here in the Bay Area.

Blessed is the flame that burns down the settler-plantation.

P
Blessed are the rockets that wil free thousands of prisoners held captive.
by the zionist settler entity and US colonizer police state.

May the spirit of Revolutionary Anti-colonialism unearth the truth from
beneath these occupied lands.

Our heart will forever be tied to the fate of Rafah
Knife to the throat of zionism
Death to amerikkka

Glory to the martyrs

abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/ss66/
Operation Campus Flood: Call for a Week of Autonomous
Action on Bay Area College Campuses for Palestine

A Call for a Week of Autonomous Action & an End to the Accelerated
Siege on Gaza: Friday June 14th - Wednesday June 19th

Hurry comrade! The acceleration of the genocide and the Zionist war of
annihilation against our Palestinian siblings must be put to stop NOW.
Immediately. Not one more day. As students, alumni, educators, and
local community who are negatively impacted by the military / prison /
schooling industrial complex, it s an urgent and historic imperative that
we take a fucking stand. Not next week, not next months not next
lifetime. But now.

‘We have the numbers and the courage. And we have the resilience to
outlast their war of attrition. For the past two months there has been a
decentralized, horizontal, and widespread insurgency growing on U.S.
college campuses, calling to #Escalate revolutionary action in support of
Palestine. The current trajectory of this movement is doomed without a
reassessment of the stakes and strategies we are currently using,

NO MORE GRADUALISM IN THE FACE OF GENOCIDE.

Anew phase of the the #Escalate movement on college campuses has
begun. With Berkeley lighting the way. We are calling this OPERATION
CAMPUS FLOOD. This initiative is an open invite for all who are sick of
it, o join in displacing the displacers. From the outside in and the inside
out, we need to raze the settler-plantation academy that provides
training, labor, capital, and a steady stream of knowledge production for
the Israel-Zionist entity. Are we tired yet of asking for permission for
the colleges to divest from the occupation? All you need to begin is three
people and some hammers and ATTACK THE GLASS. What if we popped
the locks of the libraries and liberate the books, computers, and
printers? Think of al the flyers we could print to further organize
against this genocide. Can we expropriate the infinite supply of material
wealth and resources housed in campus supply buildings?

‘We can seize buildings. We can take up space massively with
community support. We can even turn UC Berkeley Sproul plaza into
the New People’s Park.

n
“This is Ohlone and Miwok land, and the schools are also the front-lines of
gentrifier real-estate development in every city. In Berkeley, for instance,
the University is 100% the sole responsible party in the desecration of
People’s Park and forced removal of the community who lived there, a
community that found refuge there from capitalism. UCB did this to build
more student housing, Just like the displacement of Gaza, the houseless
community in People's Park was removed by the Zionists/Amerikkkans.

We can take over the cafeterias and feed the hungry. On every campus.
‘We can fulfill the demands of the 1968 student movement to liberate the
campuses and open them up to the communities around them. We can use
our imaginations if we all act together, decentralized, horizontally, and
with the shared principles of destroying the campuses until the US
withdraws its support for the Isracli-Zionist colony. We can seize the
dorm buildings and house the houseless. O, if taking space gets us
arrested in nearly every new encampment or demo (exposing us also to
massive state surveillance and network mapping) then is direct attack at
the point of production not the only viable option that remains?

Put otherwise, if these methods are not viable options at your local
campus, then there are other options, much more stealth, quiet, and cost
effective for us (and massively debilitating to them). For example, we
could simply TORCH the buildings and artificial landscapes that colonize
the land these universities occupy.

Fire is quiet. Fire is quick and easy. And it only takes on spark. These
campuses are already tinderboxes, and there are examples of targets and
methods abundant. 2 parts gasoline, 1 part oil in a beer bottle does the
trick. Or just buckets of gasoline.

Some reasons to destroy the Amerikkkan/Zionist college campuses next
week:

1) USS. college campuses produce the middle managers of global
capitalism, white supremacy, antiBlackness, and cis-heteropatriarchy.

2) The administrators are complicit in the current gratuitous siege on
Gaza.

9) College campuses in the core of Amerikkkan settler-empire are sites of
disciplining students and workers into pure docility, a trained docility
that enables the projects of genocide against Palestine.

) College campuses in the Bay Area also are facilitators of an even more

P
normalized genocide of Black and Indigenous communities here.

Do we fully understand the correlation between the means we choose and
the ends we desire? Our words and deeds? What we think in relation to
‘what we do? Are we honestly confronting the disconnect between our
dreams and the reality of the situation of genocide that Palestine—as well
as Black / Native / poor / queer / trans / disabled people here—are
confronted by? We owe it to the oppressed, enslaved, and colonized
peoples of the Bay Area to actualize social war here.

‘The U.S. state and the Zionist entity are the same apparatus, ya'll
Amerikkka has been on the ground heavily fighting with the IOF (Israel
‘Occupation Forces). This is because they are mutually-constituting settler
nations. Both cannot exist without the institution of the settler university.
Not only do college campuses, such as UC Berkeley and Stanford, literally
design and create the genocider’s technology that is exported to the
Isracli-Zionist entity, they are also centers of Zionist and Amerikkkan
white supremacist knowledge production.

Alocal example of how Operation Campus Flood has unfolded in one Bay
Area city:

ALUC Berkeley campus there have been three successive arson attacks
‘within a three weeks span, i retaliation against the UC system for their
allowance of police attacks on vulnerable student demonstrators, There
has also been a mass robbing of a building. This has been the content of
Round 2 of the UCB #Escalate struggle. Round 1 entailed the encampment,
‘which lasted several weeks and provided a space of care for people of all
‘walks of lfe. It was a beautiful spiritual atmosphere in the encampment.
‘With prayers, food distro, and peer-to-peer lessons in community
accountability and addressing conflict in movements. The reformists in
the camp fucked it up. But we also can’t blame them. They are just
politically confused, and want the end of genocide also. We need to stand
together, and show people that massive community support in the form
of materially disruptive direct action against the campuses can force an
abrupt decision to be made by the colonizer settler state. The
encampment, in round 1, could have possibly pressured the UC
administration for greater (more radical) demands if people simply stuck
around longer to defend it from fascists/zionists and liberals. Round 1also
entailed the takeover of a building, Hind’s House, which unfortunately

resulted in the mass arrest of several people. Yet the building takeover
was special and incredibly important. The fact that people seized a
building for that long should be celebrated and studied. We can do that to
several building all at once, one every campus. There is enough of us. The
people outnumber the police 1000 to 1.

Round 2 of the UC Berkeley struggle began with a targeted break in and
theft of thousands of dollars of materials from a building, and a cop car set
ablaze a few days later as retaliation against UCPD on the first day of
Pride. The Bay Area has set it offSylvia Rivera style. After that someone lit
ahill in the back of the campus on fire. And last night, someone
firebombed a building on the northside of campus. These actions, it
multiplied and done en mass can create a decisive rupture condition,
which has the potential to force the divestment of Bay Area college
systems from ties to the Israeli settler state. If they refuse, we should
simply burn their shit down. Now, this is just one example. Every campus
in the Bay Area s a different scenario, but each can be taken over and
resources redistributed)or destroyed.

This weekend of autonomous insurgent action against the colonizer
campuses invites not only students to attack, but also (importantly) the
communities around them who are affected by their colonizer-
gentrifying-displacement tactics. It is important that we show out in mass
numbers so we can successfully end this genocide.

There is no time left. People are being murdered daily. What are we doing?
Ifwe're even around in 20 years, imagine the feeling in your gut when you
learned that you could stop this, but chose to do nothing?

Many still underestimate how connected the U.S. settler state and the
Israeli-Zionist entity is. If we actualize the social war against Zionism
HERE, now, we have the greatest chance of ending the massacres that flit
across your timeline and demoralize us. What people underestimate is not
only the military connections, but in fact, the police state connections.
‘The police the bludgeon you are protest demonstrations are the (iteral)
same apparatus that is oppressing Palestine and attacking South Lebanon
as well. When people are in the streets they must be prepared to DEFEND
themselves and everyone around them. Ideally, we should promote
actions that target property and don't result in mass arrests.
We need to defend revolt instead of letting liberals who hate uprisings
demonize militant protest. Resisters instead should experiment with
group-based and lone-wolf attacks on the key infrastructure (buildings,
mainframes, technology) of the Universities and their built landscape.
Trees, bushes, and dried grass makes quiet and quick attacks easy.

Every action should speak for itself as opposed to people sharing
communiques and posting claims. We need to take a stand NOW. Or else
more people will continue to be slaughtered by the Isracl oceupier state.
‘We should make the newsreel instead of letting the mainstream and social
media algorithms shape our consciousness and points of entry for action.

Autonomy means there is no centralized leadership or no single vanguard
group leading these actions. Autonomy means that people are free to do
whatever they feel is necessary to force the UC system, CSU system, and
private college campuses to divest from the Israeli-Zionist settler entity.

ABOLISH “ISRAEL”

ABOLISH THE “USA”

ABOLISH THE SETTLER COLONIAL ACADEMY
Bring the war home!

co-signed by,
Leila’s Daughters
Safiya’s Daughters
Marilyn’s Daughters

wwwindybay.org/newsitems/2024/06/15/18867388.php.
UCLA Students Were Attacked Last Night So
‘We Retaliated With a Firebomb on UCB Campus

June 13, 2024

UCLA STUDENTS WERE ATTACKED LAST NIGHT SO WE RETALIATED
WITH A FIREBOMB ON UCB CAMPUS

NOT SURE WHAT BUILDING IT EVEN WAS. HONESTLY DONT REALLY
CARE. EVERY SINGLE BUILDING ON THE UC BERKELEY CAMPUS
DESERVES TO BE INCINERATED FOLLOWING THE UC SYSTEM'S
TREATMENT OF STUDENT PROTESTORS. LAST NIGHT THEY ATTACKED
AYOUNG WOMAN STUDENT WHO WAS SPEAKING HER MIND ON A
MEGAPHONE. SO WE UNLOADED A FIREBOMB ON THE SIDE OF A
CAMPUS BUILDING. THE FLAME WAS BIG AND SPREAD ACROSS THE
TREES AND BUSHES ON THE SIDE OF A BUILDING.

LONG LIVE THE STUDENT INTIFADA FOR PALESTINE LIBERATION
STOP THE GENOCIDE NOW

UC SYSTEM MUST DIVEST FROM ISRAEL OR FACE OUR WRATH OF
REVENGE

BLESSED IS THE FLAME

wwwindybay.org/newsitems/2024/06/15/18867336.php
retaliation arson attack on construction site
at university of kkkalifornia berkeley

June 16,2024

phase two of the #Escalate movement heats up at u.c. berkeley with a
construction site set on fire in broad daylight. this was done in retaliation
for ucpds violent assaults on vulnerable student demonstrators and to
punish the university of kkkalifornia system for supporting the genocidal
zionist-Isracl entity. this was an autonomous initiative in concert with the
WEEK OF ACTION currently underway: operation campus flood.

call it mutual aid

atone p.. thisa ft e rn oo, we torched large portions of a construction
site in the middle of u.c. berkeley campus. OPERATION CAMPS FLOOD on
u.c.b. kkkampus has began with:

— successful looting of a u.cb supply building of thousands of dollars,
— the fire bombing of au.cb cop car,

— the experimental burning of dry grass hills on the interior of campus
— the torching of a building on the perimeter of the campus

and now

— the arson of a construction site (mostly construction materials, wood
pallets, and massive dry bush area

x this was done to further retaliate against the u.c.pd for attacking
students at ues.c. and uela.

x this was done as an autonomous (self-directed act) in concert with
anyone who shows out to create liberatoratory _destruction_ until the
u.c. system divests from the genocidal “israeli” settler nation-building
project

x this was done in solidarity with all displaced peoples who were removed
from people's park - eriminalized survivors of genocide HERE.

x this was done in retaliation for the u.c. berkeley administration’s attack
on the houseless community of berkely and oakland — in retaliation for
stealing the land called people's park
lastly

© this was done on father's day for all the palestinian fathers who have
lost their children at the hands of the zionist and amerikkkan settler
states

© this was done on father's day for all the black and brown fathers who
have lost their children at the hands of ws.a. police forces in berkeley

glory to the martyrs
blessed is the flame.

112
Marilyn’s Daughters

wwiw.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/06/16/18867109,php

5
“The Student Intifada”

by Research & Destroy

June 21,2024

On April 30, events on two different coasts would together prove a
inflection point for the student intifada that had bloomed on campuses across
the US (and elsewhere)in solidarity with Gaza. These events would at once shift
the direction of the student movement and underscore its ongoing limis, in
ways suggestive for ts possible future.

New York, had long been one of the most fraught

o small part because the Columbia and Barnard
administrations were unusually repressive early on: dissolving a

student organizations, banning large swathes of public expression, and so on,
while allowing a Zionist professor (0 harass a well-mannered and ccumenical
encampment raised on April 17. The encampment made pointed reference (o the
world-famous campus uprising of 1968, a act broadly noted and superficially
understood. When dismantled by police in abrutal and highly visible rai
supporters returned in greater numbers, entering into a sustained stand-off
with administrators and riot cops both within and without a now entirely closed
campus. This was only one of a number of instances nationwide in which the
student intifada has shown remarkable persistence, improvisational lan, and
principled commitment. This should not be understated, particularly given the
fact that, while the levels of campus violence and antagonism have paled against
the zeniths of the anti-Vietnam War movement (during which, if anyone needs
reminding, more than 30 campus ROTC buildings were bombed and/or burned
10 the ground), the levels of violent repression have nonetheless been

the courage of the campus movements must be
registered as extraordinary.

Negotiations with the re-encampment yielded litile and were declared a
dead-end on April 20, On the early morning of April 30, again drawing from the
repertoire of ‘65, Hamilion Hall was taken by an autonomous group and
renamed Hind's Hall, crossing the threshold from encampment (0 occupation.
Despite the internet-vaulted popularity of building seizures at Cal Poly
Humboldt and a few other scattered examples, oceupation — from on t0 in —
had been tacitly established throughout the movement as ared line. Its traverse
at Columbia seemed to portend, at a national scale, both a fracturing of the
camps’ centralized organizational structures, and a renewed intensification of
struggle. That night, on invitation from Columbia’s president (a baronness
named Shafik whose political theory could best be summarized as, Whateverit
takes to birth a new generation of the Weather Underground), massive police
deployments, bearing familiar armaments and less familiar siege machines,
‘swept Hind's Hall and the encampment, arresting 109 people and injuring many.

ionist

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Given Columbia's placement within the movement’s self-understanding, this
might have delivered a broad impetus for escalation. May Day was just a day
away.

It was not to be. Across the continent, an apposite drama unfolded at UCLA.
On that campus,the fortified encampment had been beset for several days by a
motley of Zionist “counterprotestors” engaged in various well-funded and high-
volume forms of abuse. In the early morning of April 30th, the collected thugs
(former IDF soldiers among them) attacked the encampment directly and en
masse in a petty pogrom lasting several hours, captured in disturbing details by
those present but aggressively ignored — which i to say, enabled — by police
and administrators present and absent, This consolidated the largely explicit
‘and generally understood alignment of the universities at a national level with
forces of both formal and informal vielence.

‘The petty pogrom tracks recent political developments n the US in which
informal actors, with a tacit and unsayable authorization from the state
(regularly understood within a DuBoisian context as a racialized deputization),
exact often tate upheavals. This has clear continuities
‘with the history of, e.g, racist lynchings, but takes on its own characteristics in
this renewed moment of violent reimpasition of social hierarchies as a quasi-
state project in the twilight of empire. While the increasingly familiar (and.
increasingly legally immunized) act of driving vehicles into crowds of protestors
offers a broad and clear example, Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Perry are perhaps
the most salient comparisons, both having killed protestors during the George.
Floyd Uprising (in Wisconsin and Texas respectively), both in the end with
impunity.

In considering the path to and away from April 3oth, it will be obvious that
the fundamental challenge for the student intifada has been the elaborated,
state-directed or enabled violence of its domestic antagonists, meted out
according to the virulence of the Palestinian Exception. This should in no way be
diminished. Internally, the movement has confronted as well a significant
ifficulty in the ient of form and content, of tactics and goals, given
position as a solidarity movement distant from its primary antagonists and its
primary purpose, the liberation of Palestine.

‘The revolution in Palestine has been long, dating at least o the 1936-39
period chronicled by Ghassan Kanafani, himselfa PFLP member before his 1972
assassination. The transgenerational struggle has included bombings of railways
and pipelines, airline hijackings,airport attacks — among other things, the kinds
of actions that would help provide the world with the modern meaning of the
term “terrorist,” consolidated by press and politicians in their transvaluation of
(ant resistance in the seventies. Anticolonial warfare is by definition
‘asymmetrical struggle over territory; terrorism is simply what the imperial side
calls the requisite tactics of their antagonists. In this case, form aligns with
content, tactics with goals.

“This history provides a useful reflection on October's Toufan al-Aqsa on
October?7, 2023 — which was, among other things, study in asymmetric
brilliance. Anticolonial struggle looks like this because it is anticolonial struggle,
not (despite Zionist solecisms) because of the moral characters of Hamas or
Jihad or the PFLP or DFLP, allparticipants in that battle within a long war. The
same history offers a different reflection, a a quite distinct political level and.
considerable geographical distance, on the student intifada, whose commitment
is inarguably the liberation of Palestine but whose immi
main, that the schools divest from firms and funds providing support to the
Zionist entity.

‘The encampment or building occupation i often its own demand of the
most practical sort. It blocks pipeline or the construction ofa police training,
facilitys it stands in the middle of a vast metropolis, paralyzing the circulation of
goods; it occupies a factory, initiating a de facto expropriation. But the Gaza
solidarity encampments are “protest camps” in the classical sense,
communicating a moral position. That is o say, they are not in and of
themselves a demand — for the concerns of this movement lie elsewhere. There.
is no goal to give Harvard Yard over to the people. Morcover, ivesting Harvard
of itsties o Irael wil not stop the transfer of arms for the murder of Gazan
children this year. And yet — everyone knows that these divestments, if won,
would signal the beginning of the end of US support for Isral, which despite ts.
intensity remains contingent on factors not likely to persist as US empire and its
fossil worlds unravel.

‘The goals, that is 0 say, of the student intifada must be supported, evenif
their realization lies elsewhere. Their content is genocide’s end and Palestine’s
liberation. But their form is drawn from the history of campus and other
struggles i the U.S, notably the previous generation of campus insurgencies in
the U.S. (and elsewhere) irca 2009, whose maximalist goals were virtue and
ice. At that time, groups established liberated zones on campus against an
austerity-driven transformation of the university that all parties knew could not
be resisted in the long term except by resisting capitalism as such. The goal was
therefore escalation pure and simple, the compounding of liberation by
liberation, even f the demands of the movement were ultimately determined,
and settled, by the conjuncture.

Escalation pure and simple cannot set the agenda now. To be sure, in 2024,
people join the liberated zones knowing that US support for Isracl i as doomed
inthe long term as the US — which is o say, pretty doome. For the moment,
however, amidst growing international isolation increasingly characteristic of
the age, and with the greatest generation whose virtue survives only according
to the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau,the US remains resolute in its
Zionist sympathies. The violence marshaled against the encampments is a sign
of weakness for global Zionism. But that is not to diminish its world-historically
horrific consequences.

‘The relative weakness of the movement in the face of the horrors that it
regards, and the rightness of what it demands, leads to attitudes that must be
described as militant or, in some cases, activist. We hope to strip these entangled
terms of the pejorative meaning that they have taken among the ultraleft, for
the militant and the activist both indicate a position rather than a person, and a
position that will i all cases be oceupied, for it remains necessary. In
movements such as these, where the supporters gathered count in the
thousands rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands, militancy is a fact of
survival. The tendency to rule people in or out, to draw boundaries sharply, to
centralize, create designated security teams, audit and vet participants — all of
these acts of the militant must be seen to originate, to some degree, from the
facts on the ground, or grounds: the encampments themselves, fcing off against
Zionist counterprotestors, emboldened police, and an indifferent to openly
scornful hostile student body. Linked arms in the face of police — refusing with
the force of all to let one be taken — s the very nature of militancy, which
tightens bonds, lashes the barricades together. Militancy is an oath, its relations
vouched, made necessary through an act of freedom, Its sometimes shrill tones
sound the hollowness of our relations under capitalism, the necessity for the
kinds of thick bonds that would allow people to conspire together.

From the antiglobalization movement to Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta
Forest,from the ZAD to Standing Rock, militancy emerges where comparatively
small movements confront achievable objeetives. It s possible to stop the
construction of a pipeline, an airport, a police training facility, just as it is
possible to divest US universities of their ties to Israel (as shown by another
generation, the anti-apartheid activists of 1985-6. By possible, we mean,
achievable within the bounds of colonial capitalism.

‘These movements are therefore different, in their trajectory and
propagation, from those which voice inchoate, maximal, or existential objectives
ble apart from total social reorganization, Tactics and strategies
‘appropriate to one situation wil not necessarily be appropriate to the other —
‘you can't blow up a social relationship, at least not directly, but you can blow up
apolice training facility. You can't negotiate the end of capitalism, but you can at
least hypothetically negotiate divestment from a half-dozen firms. The critique
of activism which we inherit from the ‘90s was a eriticism of the misalignment
of reformist strategies with revolutionary ends, where such ends were stated,
whether by the Earth Liberation Front or the counter-summits of the
antiglobalization movement. But it is often today forgotten how successful on
their own terms those reformist strategies were. The point is on the one hand
that limited victories are possible, and on the other, that such vietories may in
turn become their own limits. Or to rephrase matters, revolution is something.
‘more than the aceumulation of such successes — in fact,it tends to unfold as the
consequence of failure, repression, and counter-repression, and tends to render
inapposite tactics and strategies which, in another instance, make perfect sense.
The violence of the state can transform one movement into another, but only by
making the movement, then, about the state and its power, which accepts no.
challenge.

It s the ambiguous partiality of this transformation that haunts the
student uprising of 2024. In places where police repression has been intense and
spectacular, militant and activist fractions move toward becoming mass
movements, even as they shift the political focus from a genocide halfa planet
away to truncheons and tear gas on the quad. The differing characters across
encampments, from orderly tent villages under heavy manners to the wild
building seizures of Manhattan or Arcata, bespeak among other things where
each campus stands along the are of the transformation — from minimalists
ready to treat the convening of a task force as a win, to maximalists sliding
toward total antagonism.

It is the logie of negotiation tself that arrests the slide and sets the tactical
‘agenda. We do not offer this as a fault. It is simply the baseline quality of a
movement with specific and limited demands that must be won from an
authority empowered to deliver them. Even as escalation can be a negotiating.
tool, intensifying the discomfort and serutiny for the administration, the
requirement that the administration must be considered a partner, must be
‘granted legitimacy and even the pretense of having an ethical capacity, sets
limits on tactics and on ideas. It is a difficult rhetorical needle to thread,
identifying an administration — and the police as their instrument — as the
author of intolerable brutality, and at the same time as a negotiating partner
capable of shame and equally deserving of approbation, should they offer even
the least of concessions.

‘This dynamic plays out over and over. How antagonistic can we be, how
‘much must we self-police, each camp must ask itself so as to apply pressure
while preserving the possibility of a negotiated settlement? Over the course of
April's second half, the calculus began to shift. The sustained resistance at Cal
Poly Humbolds, where occupiers (regularly making explicit reference o the
events and archives of 2009) fought back police and managed to expand across
‘campus, became an iconic representation of the movement. Authorizations of
militarized police power across the nation, notably in New York and Texas,
along with images of rooftop snipers in Ohio and Indiana redolent of Kent State
and Jackson State, eroded the pretense that administrators were simply faling
short in their duty of care. In a complementary movement, negotiations that
successfully dissolved encampments, such as those at UC Riverside and at
Brown University, offered wins so paltry as to be broadly considered losses. All
of this drove numerous encampments along the arc of transformation toward.
escalation and absolutization — sometimes in the form of unspoken scissions
between steering committees of activist militants and breakaway groups hell-
bent on autonomous actions. This is where things stood in the last hours of
April.

‘The petty pogrom at UCLA, however consonant with broader
developments of American death, was also exceptional. That the informal
violence was in some sense on behalf of a foreign power (albeit one which via its

own founding ambiguity is entirely entangled with US cultural life and national
interests)adds a degree of complexity to the dynamie. That the pogrom followed
the choreo not just of reelance police work but Isracli settler violence
underscores this dimension. Moreover, the mob violence would exert its own
peculiar influence on the student intifada more broadly. One might expect in
rain of this sequence that the administration, the mob's enablers, would lose:
crediblity as anything but an inimical presence — not just at UCLA but
throughout the movement. Ina perverse outcome, exactly because of the
movement's inner character, which i to say its interest in limited goals to be
won via negotiation, the opposite happened.

Protestors did not hesitate to accuse the very administration inviing the
pogrom of faling to prevent it going on to demand protection against
recurrences. Such moral outrage, both contrived and sincere, has its basis in
actuality It takes itssignificance in response to. very real threat: Zionist mob
Violence against encampments now became an actuality (o be contended with,
not just in Westwood but across the map of Gaza solidarity encampments.

Without wishing to exaggerate the force cither of analogy or single
example, this dynamic recapitulates an increasingly familir scene of the
present. The fa right, animated by a commitment to often.racialized violence,
more orless fascist in program, has pointedly turned o viglantism across and
beyond what we once calld the imperial core; one consequence has been that
numerous progressive or potenially insurgent social fractions have been driven
toseek protection from various institutionl parties of order, old and newly
fashioned. Rarely have things looked so bleak for radical left mobilization.

‘The bleakness of the present may explain some portion of the enthusiasm
which greeted the student intifada as a legtimate expression of insurgent spiri
“The character of the inifada, as noted, explains in turn why the particular form
of counterinsurgency represented by the petty pogrom would prove so
effective.In the circumstance of the encampments, the fiction necessary for
negotiations, .. that administrations were legitimate partners possessed both
of ethical capacities and a sincere interest in student welfare, was now granted a
new realiy: the encampments were obliged to hailthe administration and their
cops as guarantors of student safety against a purported third party. Again, it is
of limited matter whether this vision of the administration’s role arose from real
or feigned beliefs; in political comportment they amount to the same thing,
wherein the captured elements of the movement now must hew to their captors
as protectors, Stockholm $yndzome on the quad.

Not only did this strengthen the administration’s hand in negotiations, it
meant affirming the repressive convention of blaming everything on outside
agitators. This in turn forced students to intensify theirselfpolicing while
forming a condon sanitaire between the students and their potential comrades,
the only real oute toward expansion of the movement, Some few encampments
tricd to refuse these new or heightened constraints. In some locations the
pressures drove open carlier issures, sending autonomous groups toward
further building occupations and the like. These were exceptions to the broader

¥
motion. Instead of escalation, s opposite. The logic of the militant in its most
limited sense was afforded all the remaining political power of the movement,
which amounted to negotiating from a position of extraordinary weakness.

Perhaps needless to say, this distressing turn, along with the arrival to
some encampments of the university’s great siege engine — summer break —
introduced a dying fall to late spring. The movement continues where the spring.
term does, now most forcefully at the University of California where Research &
Destroy began 15 years ago with a communique supporting the occupation of
campus buildings, and where a rolling strike of graduate student workers and.
other academic employees brought at least five campuses to distress and
confusion if not quite a halt

In this regard, form and content tlt back toward a clearer alignment. The
strike, once and for good reason understood as potentially part ofa
revolutionary sequence, has largely established itselfin the US as a limited
means toward limited ends, specific demands. The return of the political strike
to the precincts of the UAW, however, portends something more. As the
institutions of empire have had progressively less surplus, less wiggle room,
fewer fucks to give and fewer reforms to offer, winning these in any serious way
has required ever more intensity. Ifthe path to revolution is no longer to be
found via accruing reforms, then the reforms themselves, if that is one’s goal,
nonetheless require something like revolutionary intensity. It may not be too
long before one must needs blow up a pipeline just to win soedem policy
changes.

‘This sets in part the measure of the current movement. The coordination of
strike and encampment, if it can be developed, would be a significant and
heartening development. Alongside the steadfastness of the student protests,
the realization of the strike must be attributed, in large part, to the work that
comrades have done to deepen and radicalize the UAW at the UC. Last year's
strike may have been beaten by the university, its victories turned to defeats
through the power of the university to recategorize workers, but the graduate.
students remain mobilized, organized at the department level. At the same time,
however, these strikes present at least two problems.

‘The first is that they accede to a legalisic terrain, requiring the negotiation
oflabor law to find basis for a political strike despite a contract with a No Strike
proviso. The union’s claim, that the summoning of police violence against
protestors is an Unfair Labor Practice and thus legitimate basis for a strike, has
shown itself both persuasive and vulnerable. The latter came clear on the first
Friday of June when an Orange County court issued a Temporary Restraining.
‘Order against the strike, arresting it in s tracks. This would be less of an issue
had not the strike itself, in the context of demobilized encampments and
exhausted academic years nationwide, become the leading orientation for the
movement, offering leverage elsewhere absent. Consequently, the fate of

campus solidarity with Gaza was handed to the courts — a strange evolution
from its origins in defiant llegalism, or at least principled indifference to official
policies. The legal setback is temporary but the clock is ticking.

‘The second problem s the exten to which such strikes risk re-
instantiating the problems of militancy at another level. During the 2022-23 UC
strike, the necessary focus of rank-and-file formations on internal cohesion
toward pushing past the grade deadline, where their core leverage lay, left other
factions on campus (particularly undergraduates) with litle sense of how they
might involve themselves and help push things forward. The connection
between this strike, however, and the broader university Gaza solidarity
movement, provides the opportunity for such divisions to be transcended,
though such efforts will likely need to be coordinated at a distance from union
leadership — who might worry that elements not directly under their control
‘will weaken their position at the bargaining table. The “stand-up” strike model
is,in this case, no more a structure of escalation than it i a structure for
forestalling the same, holding power in reserve. This is necessary for the union,
not only legally, but in order to bargain with the university, by showing their
‘willingness to restrain their members. But it does not mean that the strike is
strengthened by others acceding to the union leadership about when, where,
‘and how to escalate. It i already clear that the local's leading fraction,
historically hesitant and even callow, willrequire substantial pressure from
below. In truth, the university will likely be willing to yield anything of
significance only onee it is clear that the strike risks turning into a wider
campus conflagration, with lecturers and tenure-track faculty joining the strike
and students engaging in autonomous action to liberate campuses. It is then
that the university will truly want to avail itself of the union’s disciplinary
power.

‘These problems have complementary solutions. The encampments, bearers
of the initial spirit under the slogan “Escalate for Gaza,” will need to push the
union to overspill the constraints of policy and of legalism. The strikers must by
the same token overcome boundaries imposed by the division of labor at the UC,
‘and particularly the divisions among students, academic workers, faculty, staff,
and so-called outside agitators. This can sometimes be difficult given the
position in which graduate student workers find themselves with regard to
undergraduates, for whom their real concern s the basis of solidarity but no less
aroute to paternalism. Unionized educators may feel compunctions about
violently blockading campus and confronting some of their own students who
are not in solidarity, but students themselves need have no such scruples. Take
the buildings, take the campus, then give them away to the broader movement,
so that it can organize for work in other areas, such as direct action against
defense contractors. Come back after summer and take them again. The fight for
the liberation of Palestine will be long,

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©
LONG LIVE THE
INTIFADA FOR
PALESTINIAN

LIBERATION!