for some reason i can't stop thinking about how, after the cops cleared out hind's hall, they brought all the students one by one in front of news cameras, faced them towards the camera and ripped their masks off. i remember some, perhaps with genocidal parents, desperately trying to keep their heads angled down and away from the camera's gaze. some calmly stared it down. i only watched a few.
to me it symbolizes the essential unity of the repressive apparatus; the nominally independent media company and the equally nominally independent municipal police department uniting to keep the colonial machine going, no matter the cost, but there was also something almost pornographic in the unmasking. one wonders how many of the nypd officers ripping off the protestors' masks fantasized about doing the same to regular american civilians during the height of the pandemic.
