NYC Palestine encampments: and then there was one
“We’re proud of our encampment. But we feel bad for the others. It feels a bit weird because we haven’t had to deal with what they have.”
Tammy and Eli sit on the pavement outside the Fashion Institute of Technology on West 27th Street. Theirs is the last standing Palestine solidarity university encampment in New York City, after the New York University and New School occupations were cleared out by police in the early hours of Friday.
The FIT encampment began on Thursday 25 April. About 50 people regularly sleep over in the tents assembled here, but the number of participants rises during the day, when sympathetic students and faculty show solidarity by just hanging around. Some do no more than eat their lunch at the camp—but they understand that it is meaningful to show up and be counted, even for a moment.
Perhaps the campus administration will leave this encampment be, hoping that the solidarity campaign fizzles. It is, after all, the end of the campus year—classes are now finished pretty much everywhere. But maybe it’s only a matter of time before this last encampment is cleared by the NYPD. Time will tell.
There has not been a university student movement in the United States in decades—let alone a global movement, which the spreading of these encampments arguably approaches. Do these students register the significance of their actions?
“It almost feels unreal, surreal”, Tammy says. “We saw ourselves on Al Jazeera last week and that was a shock. I can’t really comprehend the bigger picture of all this. Maybe it will become clearer in a couple of years when I look back on it. Right now, I think a lot of us still feel like kids. But we’re caught in something much bigger than us.”
The students I spoke to at FIT all relate a feeling resembling embarrassment, although no-one thinks that word quite apt. While they are proud of their contribution, they are acutely aware that, so far, they haven’t had to deal with the police violence that their comrades faced at Columbia, CUNY and NYU—let alone what those in Gaza have endured.
They also haven’t faced the intense media spotlight and the associated smear campaign against their specific encampment. So there’s a feeling of “we’re doing our bit, but we’re also a bit lucky”.
Nevertheless, students at FIT have still dealt with the general crackdown on Palestine solidarity sentiment.
Their campaign became embodied in an encampment not simply because of the events at Columbia, the crackdown on which spurred the encampments around the United States. It was also because of the fierce response of campus authorities to Palestine solidarity activism in the last six months.
Tammy relates the story of a young woman being punched in face last year while petitioning for the campus to divest from Israeli apartheid. The aggressor, another student, seems to have escaped any sanction at all. Yet peaceful anti-war activists have been treated with nothing but suspicion, or worse.
In February, three students put up flyers emblazoned with a picture of Nelson Mandela. Their message was: if the institute could divest from South African apartheid (which it reportedly did in 1985), then it should divest from companies that today profit from the Gaza genocide.
Incredibly, the students were charged with discrimination, hate speech and harassment. One was even evicted and has been prohibited from accessing student accommodation for the remainder of their time at the institute. The cases reportedly are ongoing—so hopefully subject to challenge and appeal.
In the meantime, the students say that they have no choice but to remain steadfast as the last encampment in the city. In a wonderful gesture, several activists took the time to record a message of solidarity with students in Australia, who are now facing concerted media attacks—and in some cases physical attacks—for emulating the encampments that were first established here in New York.
The FIT students said:
“Hi Melbourne, hi Sydney, hi Brisbane, hi Canberra, hi Adelaide, hi Perth!
“We just wanted to express our solidarity from FIT to you guys. Students united can never be defeated! So hopefully we can all remain steadfast in our fight towards justice and liberation for Gaza and Palestine. We can’t be defeated!”
