SWEET SPLENDOR AND RUIN

I was punched and pepper sprayed by cops that my university administration set on student protesters yesterday. Including once where a cop ripped my mask off my face, grabbed my jaw, and sprayed pepper sprayed straight into my mouth. The university sent out an alert in the middle of our protest canceling classes for the rest of the day, only citing “adverse conditions”. After protesters dispersed under threat of even more violence and three buses of riot police from all over the state with rubber bullets and bully sticks parked in front of one our school’s famous landmarks. I staggered over to a couple of friends who were watching on the sidelines. They gave me water and an apple and held a bag of ice on my very pepper spray irritated face. As they were walking me back to my dorm we ran into one of their roommates. She had taken cancelled classes as an opportunity to get crumbl cookie with her friends. Standing in front of her, happy in a floral blouse with her box of cookies, in my pepper spray and water soaked tshirt, keffiyeh sadly hanging off my shoulder, holding an ice pack to my mouth, felt like a slap in the face.

After putting my pepper spray soaked clothes, shoes, and keffiyeh in a plastic bag and taking an extraordinarily painful shower, a friend and I went for dinner just off campus. There we had a pot of green tea and ramen to soothe pepper sprayed throats. We got ice cream after (shared a cup with chocolate and raspberry pomegranate with strawberry pieces on top, it was very good). From our spot outside the ice cream place we watched a steady stream of groups of sorority girls in matching jeans shorts and blue bikini tops walking back to their apartments after some apparently raucous parties. The cognitive dissonance was insane. I really felt a little like I was going crazy.

Even this morning, waking up to the smeared sharpie of the National Lawyer’s Guild’s phone number on my arm, a black and blue chest from where a grown man straight up clocked me while I was held up by two other protesters in a wall, and a still sore throat and eyes from the pepper spray, life goes on like normal. I still have final papers to write and a math exam to review for.

I’m not sure I really have a point. But, this feeling only makes me want to fight harder for a free Palestine. So, fuck Israel for being an apartheid state and all of their crimes over the last 76 years. Fuck university administration for not disclosing their level of investment in Israel. Fuck university administration for not divesting from this genocide. Fuck Joe Biden for actively supporting this genocide. And fuck the police.

Just a reminder for people who may not know, in light of protestors at UCLA being shot in the face with rubber bullets— rubber bullets are not bullets made of rubber. They are metal bullets encased in rubber.

Despite being called “non-lethal” or sometimes “less lethal”, they are well known to cause death and permanent disability.

Here’s a photo showing their size— these are actual rubber bullets used during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Do not let them downplay the severity of what they are subjecting this students to for standing against genocide. Stay safe and stay educated.

EDIT: Twitter banned @/nosferatusexgod, the student shot, whose tweet I linked to (as a primary source) at the top of the post. Screenshots of the tweet I originally linked to can be found here.

I'm very tired of this "queer college students should stop supporting Palestine, they'd kill you there!" I watched a hijabi ask a trans man, "but what name do you want to go by?" A butch giving a woman their hoodie so that she could keep her hair covered after the cops took her scarf. Muslim girls making sure the lesbian couple got through the system together. Religious men making sure purple haired protestors got out safe. I don't want to hear it. Solidarity forever, free Palestine.

April 28, 2024 - An unintentionally funny video by a zionist propagandist shows off some good organisation and discipline at the UCLA encampment for Palestine.

This video is just proof of how quickly and inauthentically white women will turn on the waterworks. This shit gets people killed and they know it. None of these students are being intimidating. What does that even mean?

Hind Rajab was a 5 year old girl in Gaza who was killed while she hid alone in a car, along with the paramedics who tried to rescue her. Yesterday students at Columbia seized the administration building and renamed it in her honor.

Gadzooks Bazooka Instagram: gadzooks_bazooka

Remembering #HindRajab & children in #Gaza: This is what the mother of the child, Hind Rajab . https://tmblr.co/ZTeZMyfB_GHeeu00

DrSonnet — هذا ما قالته والدة الطفلة هند رجب عندما سمعت بخبر... (tumblr.com)

Did you know?

"Double Dutch" Rope Jumping brought to New York by Dutch Immigrants in the late 1600s has been a Black♥️American past time since the late 1920s in Harlem but performed in Black American communities nationwide. Becoming an 'organized sport' in the 1970s, expanding worldwide.

sharing some gofundmes of Palestinians that haven't reached their goals yet

Help Rani Escape Gaza

Help majd's family evacuate from death in Gaza

Help me to evacuate my family from Gaza

Support the Future of AbdalRahman from Gaza

Help Nael to survive and complete his studies.

Help Baraa and her injured family out of Gaza

Help Sana’a and her family evacuate from Gaza

Help Sara get treatment leave Gaza with her family

Reda in Gaza to survive the war

Help me and my brothers flee Gaza

...........................................................

Demonstrators and artists have taken the steps of the met museum unfurling an ENORMOUS (30 x 50 foot) quilt created by artists around the world in solidarity with Palestine.

The quilt was collectively created by 64 artists from around the world and shipped to New York City.

They're demanding the met museum:

(1) cut ties with board members profiting from Israeli bombardment + occupation of Palestine

(2) support an immediate + permanent ceasefire

(3) aid the preservation of Palestinian cultural heritage sites being destroyed by Israel

In addition to the quilt, demonstrators reclaimed and redistributed Met flyers, stickered with movement messaging and demands.

cred

source

cant get more fascist police state than snipers on rooftops overlooking peaceful protests.

this is what democracy looks like.

"We'll be back to rebuild it" Gaza, 2024

When I say there are things that Israel will never ever take away from Palestinians I also mean the way the fight for Palestine is ingrained into every aspect of our lives, down to even the names we give our children who come decades and decades after our initial Nakba.

For example, Bisan is a very popular girls name in Palestine and it is the name of a Palestinian city that was depopulated by Israel in 1948. Girls with names like Bisan, Yafa and Jenin may not have seen these cities yet, but they carry them within them regardless.

Also, many Palestinians can identify with how our aunts and uncles have symbolic names such as A'ed or A'eda which mean returnee. These names were not chosen arbitrarily by our grandparents who were forced to raise their families in refugee camps. Similarly, there are names like Thaer (revolutionary), Bassel (courageous) and Nidhal (revolutionary struggle) that are very common to this day.

We are literally walking around carrying notions of Palestine and our struggle with us and planting the seeds of resistance within our children, we must be so frustrating!

Palestinian artist Asmaa Aljueithni shares a photo of the only thing that survived the airstrike that left her Gaza home in ruins: one of her paintings.

April 11, 2024. Displaced Palestinians in Gaza prepare celebrations for Eid, despite the harshness and uncertainty of their circumstances.