Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 501 points – Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid
bbc.com

Police and private security throng every entrance but one. Steel barriers line the streets. Students pack up belongings in their cars and leave for home - classes are cancelled, and exam plans are up in the air.

Everywhere there is gloom, and uncertainty about what happens next at Columbia University.

Students told the BBC that the university's decision to call in police to clear a Gaza protest late on Tuesday, leading to a raid on the occupied Hamilton Hall and hundreds of arrests, has left the college community shattered.

The university president, Nemat Shafik, said that it was with great regret that she ordered the police raid against students and others she said had infiltrated the protest. It would "take time to heal", she added in a message in the operation's aftermath.

For students of this prestigious school in Manhattan, New York, how long is unclear.

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This is a private university crushing student protests.

With police, an apparatus of the state.

You have to work harder to come to that conclusion than just going “hey isn’t the police employed by the government?”

But the state itself is controlled by corporate interests.

Yeah, but the relationship isn’t simply one way.

The apparatus of the state often includes corporations, such as Lockheed Martin, or the IMF/World Bank, or Elbit Systems, or Blackwater, or the Pinkertons.

The state also enshrines the rights of corporations and maintains the capitalistic and/or colonialistic relationships corporations have with people, and protects them from everyone else.

In return, the govt gets a small amount of taxes, and a surprisingly high degree of legitimacy if the line goes up.

I didn't know that the university had control over the NY police force.

They don't. That's why they request police resources.

So you know and understand that the police force is controlled by the government, but still fail to connect the dots between that fact and them crushing the protests?

And why would the police comply with such a ridiculous request when they have more important things to do?

Under capitalism the main police function is to break strikes and to repress other forms of protest against the policies of the ruling class. Any civic usefulness other forms of police activity may have, like controlling traffic and summoning ambulances, is strictly incidental to the primary repressive function. Personal inclinations of individual cops do not alter this basic role of the police. All must comply with ruling-class dictates. As a result, police repression becomes one of the most naked forms through which capitalism subordinates human rights to the demands of private property. If the cops sometimes falter in their antisocial tasks, it is simply because they -- like the guns they use -- are subject to rust when not engaged in the deadly function for which they are primarily trained.
No police organization is exactly the same day in and day out. Two essential factors determine its character at a given moment: the social climate in which the cops have been operating and the turnover of personnel within the force. An unseasoned cop may tend to be somewhat considerate of others in the performance of duty, especially while class relations are relatively peaceful. Even in such calm times, however, the necessary accommodation must be made to capitalist demands, including readiness to shoot anyone who tampers with private property. Otherwise the aspiring cop, if he is not kicked out of the force, will have little chance of rising beyond a beat in the sticks. By gradually weeding out misfits along these general lines, a police department can keep itself abreast of requirements during a more or less stable period in class relations.

-- Farrell Dobbs, Teamster Rebellion

For the same reason they will comply with such request from any private party? Try to pitch a couple of tents on your neighbor's front lawn with your friends to see if the police doesn't get you moving when they get called.

They tear gassed students at my old public university. The way they're being treated is ridiculous and completely out of line with previous protests.

There's a fucking sniper at my old university. On the roof of the student union building where my friends and I used to go smoke weed. That's a head trip.

Cool. Now do universities like UCLA and IU.

Both universities are gonna have a real fun time explaining themselves in court, because I guarantee they'll see lawsuits over this. Private universities get a lot of leeway over what they allow, but public universities are bound by the First Amendment. Any who are violating the protestors rights are gonna get fucked six ways to Sunday.

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