There's been an encampment at my university for a few weeks now, I haven't been camping, but I've been trying to volunteer and support them whenever I can. Especially seeing the way that other schools have been treating their students. Thankfully all has been pretty peaceful here, but we are lucky.
I think though that it's caused a really interesting phenomenon on my campus where people want to agitate and get themselves arrested. Without going into details, over the weekend there was a protest centered around shouting and waving signs at members of the university's Regents that were at a fancy event. We stood around and chanted for the evening, and as the people exited the building.
Once everyone was out though, it was just us and the police. We proceeded to form a line in front of the building, and encircled the police as they tried to exit. Which was cool for exactly 5 seconds before you think about where this goes from here. Police started shoving with their bicycles and spraying pepper spray at students, forcing us to retreat. It was scary.
Now I'm not excusing a damn thing the police did. There was no need to use force, shove students, beat them, use pepper spray, or anything else. None of us should have gotten hurt there. But on the flip side, I think this was a product of pent up student energy. We wanted to make a fuss and the easiest way to do that is to provoke a group that we know to already be corrupt.
Which honestly, fine, you want to poke the bear you can do that. But did it further the movement? Did the bunch of us who showed up to harass the Regents need to get drawn into it? I don't blame individual protestors, I think it's easy to get swept up and I sure as hell am frustrated too, but this seems to be a point to take a look at the movement itself. What are we here for? What are we doing to further that goal?
There does appear to be a bright side, we got hella donations and support after all that. But while that's great to see, with graduation happening I think we need to start thinking bigger. How do you build a movement that's sustainable? We need to be united and in it for the long haul.
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