Inside the Columbia Library Takeover: an Interview with a Palestine Solidarity Activist

Volunteers with The Worker interviewed an activist who participated in the Palestinian solidarity Butler Library demonstration at Columbia University on May 7. The activist was one of those arrested in the mass arrests conducted by the NYPD after Columbia University President Shipman called in the police to break up the occupation. Police blockaded the activists in the library and brutalized the demonstrators both within and outside the library, though the demonstrators on both sides of the police blockade stood firm in defiance of the crackdown.

Can you speak about the significance of the action carried out at Butler?

From the start, the student movement has agitated around “no business as usual” during a genocide. Disrupting Butler Library, the central and largest library on campus, in finals season, when it’s most used, was deliberate. To win our demands, we have to make supporting genocide more costly to the university than beneficial. Disrupting all aspects of university life help us achieve that by making the university spend increasingly more money on surveillance, security, and repairing damages. We are forcing Zionist donors to cut ties with the university and they’ve lost millions in federal funding. This year, we’ve seen more intense repression, including the kidnapping of activists, including our peers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi. We wanted to show the school that we aren’t afraid to fight back. No matter how many of us they suspend, expel, or detain, we will always keep fighting for Palestine.

Current president, and former co-chair of the Board of Trustees, Claire Shipman is already trying to frame it like we are these menaces who only want to cause chaos and disrupt learning. Really, we want to promote learning. We believe education must serve the interests of the people and their just struggles against imperialism. We named the space Basel-Al Araj Popular University, after a revolutionary Palestinian martyr whose writing we studied this year. We had hours of programming planned, including speeches, teach-ins, and a reading guide.

By contrast, Columbia’s Butler Library is named for former university president Nicholas Murray Butler, who established a quota on Jewish students, invited the Nazi ambassador to Columbia, then expelled a student for protesting these actions.

Recently, The Worker reported on infiltration of the student movement by monopoly media journalists, would you say that this action maintained the element of surprise?

Some have said Columbia knew in advance. Others have said it was a surprise. Either way, there has been increasingly more Public Safety and Security on campus, and since the school agreed to the Trump administration’s demands, security can arrest us.

What the movement can learn from this experience is the importance of flexibility and contingency plans in the case that conditions change or are different than anticipated. Maybe we should have waited, seeing that there was more security than normal. But there will always be security, so many of us felt we couldn’t back down. Maybe we should have mobilized in the lobby, giving us more exits and windows to escape from. This way, we could have avoided mass arrests and better preserved our forces. I don’t regret anything that happened, but rather want to analyze and apply lessons to future actions. Actions like this also emphasize the need for democratic centralism. With changing conditions, strong leaders who can quickly grasp what people are willing to do and what tactics best suit the situation is integral to make quick decisions in the moment.

Can you tell us about the atmosphere inside the library, about the energy, the politics, and the lessons learned?

Over 100 of us flooded the library, chanting and drumming. There was so much spirit and rage. From the start, public safety and Allied Security were belligerent. As we rushed the reading room, they grabbed protesters and threw them to the ground. Those who made it inside transformed the space with Palestinian flags, pamphlets, stickers, and banners in honor of Mahmoud, Mohsen, and all political prisoners.

Several times we tried to leave but security wouldn’t let us. We began arguing and trying to force our way out. The officers yelled in our faces and began throwing protesters to the ground and choking others. They violently arrested a few. Eventually, a man came and told us we could leave on the condition that we’d tap our IDs on the way out. I was really happy to see how steadfast my peers were. We refused to identify ourselves and continued with our scheduled programming. We understand identification as a tactic to split us, particularly when the sensationalist narratives of “outside agitators” are so popular.

Even though there were significantly more of us than them, we felt we had to hold back. While they can brutalize us, we were hesitant to fight them because we knew we would face intense charges. At one point, the fire alarm went off and public safety still wouldn’t budge. One said we would all “burn together.”

An important lesson I think the student movement can learn from this experience is the importance of practicing militant formations. Had we practiced blockade formations, we could have successfully escaped. Activists should work on defense and offense techniques, particularly as repression intensifies.

Do you have any advice for other anti-imperialists who find themselves in stand-off situations with the combined forces of reaction?

In the moment standing off with officers can feel scary and the potential of suspension and expulsion is intimidating. However, the more we project our bravery and strength, the more we can inspire students and other activists around the world. Over time, we grow stronger as we continue to learn from our experiences and incorporate more people into the movement. By contrast, imperialism and the forces of reaction just grow weaker. Imperialism is dying. It’s untenable. The more they lash out, the more they reveal their weakness. Universities across the country have mass arrested thousands of students, yet we remain undeterred. We always come back because we know we are fighting for what’s right. People we’re in contact with in Gaza have extended their gratitude and encouragement. They’re enduring bombs and starvation and knowing that our small action could give them hope is unfathomable to me. Any amount of repression is worth that.

Can you talk a bit about the ideological struggles in the solidarity movement and where you stand on question of the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination?

After Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, there were many contradictions among the people. Some rejected violence entirely. Over time, through political education and witnessing the horrors of Israel’s occupation and genocide, most in the student movement now understand the necessity of armed struggle. There have been conversations about different methods of resisting, but we have seen violent resistance proven to be primary again and again. Most of us understand the heroism behind Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the resistance that has thrived in Palestine for over a century.

While our conditions are incredibly different, we have been able to apply lessons from the resistance to our movement. We have learned the futility of conciliation and going through sanctioned channels to appeal to the morality of university admins. No moral person would need students begging to make them realize funding apartheid and genocide is bad.

We’ve tried referendums, petitions, and sanctioned rallies. The university does not care. These actions weren’t done in vain, because they helped us bring more people into the movement, who were then educated through practice that these sanctioned methods don’t work. Our experience has shown us the necessity of imposing ourselves on the university to conquer our demands. Monopoly media has covered in horror the increased militancy of the student movement. It should come as no surprise. When people have exhausted peaceful methods, they learn the only way to win is to disrupt.

Thank you for the interview. Is there anything you’d like to convey to our readers?

Last year, The Worker covered the widespread discontent among NYPD, particularly relating to their increased overtime in response to all the Palestine solidarity actions across the city. One of the most interesting parts of my arrest was seeing that in real time. While my fellow protesters and I were in relatively good spirits and joking around with each other, the cops were completely dispirited. Their machines looked decades old and kept malfunctioning. The cops would start cursing at the machines and complaining that things are always busted. They consistently whined to each other about being tired and wanting to go home. They were frustrated by the amount of protesters, who overwhelmed the few computers they had to fill out paperwork, making everything last much longer. One of them started freaking out because he couldn’t find the charger to his vape and another one seemed to have pink eye.

While our group had a large crowd for jail support, who cheered and applauded each released protester, the cops who left were jeered at. When I was leaving the station, I heard two patrollers talking about how they could never work for SRG [the Strategic Response Group, a section of the NYPD formed in 2015 to police protests] and that their jobs are bad enough as it is.

I mention this just to say that while from the outside it’s not always clear how our actions impact the forces of reaction, they are miserable and struggling. Meanwhile, we grow stronger.

Image: An activist speaks to the gathered demonstrators through a megaphone in the occupied Butler Library of Columbia University, renamed “Basel-Al Araj Popular University” by the demonstrators, May 7.

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