Metadata

• When: 2023-12-07

• Where: Columbia University

• Who:

• Organizations: CUAD

• Tags:

Description

• National Students for Justice in Palestine held a virtual meeting. See Photo.

• Representatives of multiple school SJP chapters and others participated. The subject was coalition building.

• An organizer of Columbia SJP and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and relayed the following information. See, Audio.  See Photo , Photo and Photo.

• CUAD Revitalized Following SJP/JVP Suspension.  “So the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Coalition was initially formed in 2016 by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace as part of the larger BDS movement…And after 2020 the CUAD coalition just became entirely inactive. And it was revitalized once SJP and JVP were suspended last month.” See, Audio at 00:09:28.  See Photo and Photo.

• Forming Coalition, Manifesto, Masks to Prevent Doxing. “So I think it's important to contextualize that for, before these events, the last two months, SJP was largely inactive like in the last few years and the coalition was just as SJP and JVP before. But after the recent events, SJP gained a lot of approval from the student body in that like so many people would show up to our protests, but we would have to, like, distribute masks for every single person at our protest. We would order, like, masks in bulk because everyone was scared of doxing and they wanted to support us, but they were so scared to do that publicly after what happened at Harvard. Because I think that, like, set an example, initially, for all the schools. And there were many orgs who would support us behind the scenes, but didn't want to endorse us publicly. So when they would speak at our protests, they would identify themselves as, like, a certain identity as opposed to part of that, like representing that cultural group. But, after our suspension, students were so furious, like I did not expect it, honestly. And we had a few allied organizations who publicly supported us such as like the Barnard Columbia Abolition Collective, Student Worker Solidarity and other like pro Palestinian orgs on campus for other schools like the School of International Public Affairs had a specific Palestine Solidarity Group and all of them reached out to us to see how they could help us. And then after a lot of outreach efforts by students from allied organizations, we ended up having a big meeting with many representatives from different student organizations. There must have been like 40 to 50 people in a room, all representing different organizations, and we ended up deciding that we would design a manifesto outlining our values, our demands for joining the coalition, basically, and so our decision was that we would not publish the manifesto with the signatures until we hit 30, like 30 signatures, because we didn't want people to feel endangered by signing on. We wanted to create a united front, so we waited until we had 40 signatures and that's when we published it in the Columbia Spectator, which is our student newspaper. But before we did that, we had a protest, the first protest after the suspension of SJP and JVP that was hosted by another organization on campus, ‘cause we can't host protests anymore, but that protest in which we announced the coalition. we read out the manifesto.” See, Audio at 00:24:56. See Photo.

• Support Palestine, Oppose Zionists. “So I think at Columbia, there's a very unique situation in that even prior to the coalition, there was already a lot of support for Palestine. Even though initially when everything started, like, people didn't know much, but I think this sounds kind of crazy, but the Zionists made it very easy for people to be on our side … They would hold up signs saying like no ceasefire until the hostages are free, stuff like that, like they just had no conduct I guess at Columbia … But obviously, like the people on campus were also really scared. And I think that that's specifically what the coalition helped change.” See, Audio at 00:50:40. See, Photo. See Video from TheStuStuStudio on X.

• Faculty, WOL, Outside Forces, Events Always Happening; Emboldened Students. “So after our suspension and when the coalition was formed, there was also so many other things that happened outside of students. For example, there was the, the Columbia faculty, started a faculty for Justice in Palestine, and there was also a rally outside Columbia led by within our lifetime, all the like New York City. Like it was massive, like thousands of people. New York City elected officials like AOC condemned the suspension of our organizations. Columbia alumni had a denouncement ceremony where they would they left like their caps and gowns at the Columbia gates.  There was  just so much more I can't even list all of it, but I think this massive mobilization from even like external groups emboldened many of the students on campus to support us openly as well. We started seeing, like a massive uptick in Solidarity teach ins  hosted by organizations. For example, the Black Student Organization hosted a black Palestine Solidarity Teach In and mobilized all the black orgs on campus to endorse SJP and JVP. There were sit ins and actions planned by non-SJP JVP organizers for the first time. And I it was like every day there was a new event happening where there was an action, a teach in, anything, something was always happening. And this built up to, we recently just called for a tuition strike at Colombia with the demand for a binding divestment referendum.”  See, Audio at 00:51:54.  See, Photo. See Video from TheStuStuStudio on X.

• SJP/JVP Suspension Led to Support.  “The coalition didn't necessarily as much change people's support for Palestine as much as it changed their willingness to publicly endorse us, because now like before, people were scared to even say that they supported us as an org. And now there's a massive pressure for these organizations to actually sign on to our coalition, specifically towards identity based or cultural organizations, and it's been a topic of discussion in almost every student organization on campus, so I do think that this coalition would have been very difficult to start if  SJP and JVP were not suspended in the first place, because that's what it took for people to become vocal.” See, Audio at 00:53:27. See Video from TheStuStuStudio on X.

• Aggressive Outreach. “So I think the most important, like the first thing that you need to take into account when coalition building is, is outreach to student organizations and like you need to take a very aggressive approach to outreach in  that we made a whole spreadsheet with like every single organization at Columbia. And we have people on every organization, like just asking them like what they need to know in order to come to, like, just just come to the meeting to see if they want to sign on and, Another thing is also that like I mentioned earlier, before publishing our initial coalition with all the organizations, we waited until there was a certain amount to make sure that students felt protected. We also gave them tips on avoiding dox, saying like they, they took down their posts with faces and all that. But at a certain point, once there's so many orgs in your coalition, doxing is not possible because like for example the Student Workers Union signed on to our coalition and they represent over 3000 students at Columbia. There's just no way to Dox everybody from these organizations. So I definitely would say like, don't underestimate how much energy you need to put into outreach. It's very daunting initially, but it's so , it's really worth it at the end.”  See, Audio at 01:15:43. See Photo.

• Become More Openly Radical. “Another thing is.  Don't compromise on principles. I think that there might be, like an inclination to water  down what you're saying so that more organizations sign on, but that's not the goal. The goal should be that you, in fact, you should be able to become more openly radical because of the coalition protecting you.” See, Audio at 01:17:04. See Photo.

• No Fear, No Normalizers. “Like there might be this idea. Oh, we need to, like explicitly condemn resistance or like other other things make us more palatable. But the point of the coalition is that you should be able to express full support for Palestinian liberation without as much fear of consequences…and the best thing to help with this is to have a manifesto outlining your values and your mission, I think that that’s like something it’s so important to stick to, that because if you let in normalizers and people who undermine the Palestinian resistance, that’s very harmful to the movement…” See, Audio at 01:17:25. See Photo.

• Collective Liberation, Intersectionality. “And I think the last thing is that there should be a constant emphasis on collective liberation. Even from the very start of the protests in October, we really emphasized using solidarity chants, like from Palestine to the Philippines stop the US war machine. And so on. It's really, really important to emphasize collective liberation…And it's really important to outline exactly how our collective liberation is just intertwined….yeah, like it's really important to also host solidarity teach ins with cultural organizations like, for example, black Palestinian solidarity teach ins or South Asian, then Palestinian Solidarity teach ins, and so on, because that really helps expand your coalition.” See, Audio at 01:18:36. 

• Make Doxing Difficult. “I think that the point of the coalition building is really to make doxing kind of meaningless or like not even worth trying because nobody in our coalition has been doxed after the formation of the coalition, the only doxing happened before the coalition was formed. And I think, like, at a certain point it's really difficult to just dox every single person in a given coalition, and it would be mainly just like the main organizers of SJP that would be more at risk in that regard. And I also think that Pro Palestine alumni networks are really useful for securing like job opportunities in case doxing does happen, because I, I do believe every university does have like a network of Pro Palestine alumni, and I think somebody else asked a question about that. So that's one way that you can definitely utilize that.”  See, Audio at 01:38:41

• Leftists/Socialists. “So at Columbia at least I would say that the, the orgs that unconditionally supported us openly even before when doxing was an issue or what we were more scared about doxing where like the. the leftist or like socialist collectives on campus, like the student workers. What was it? Student worker solidarity. Barnard Columbia Abolition collective, the YDSA. So I think that it's good to reach out to them first.”  See, Audio at 01:42:26

• Militant Outreach. “I think just like militant outreach is the only option.”  See, Audio at 01:43:28.  

• Announce Coalition.  “So for Columbia, we published it in the Columbia Spectator because usually Columbia admin tends to keep track of what's being published on there just be what's like going on. And that's the best way for admin to see that type of stuff. And yes, that's the point of the coalition. Like, orgs need to publicly sign on, because of course there's a lot of people who will endorse you behind the scenes, but that's not enough right now, like at all. That's not gonna get you anywhere. The point of the coalition is that these orgs should publicly sign on. And I sent an example for Columbia in the chat.“  See, Audio at 01:47:28.

• Instagram. “But yeah, we also created an Instagram afterwards for CU apartheid divest and all the events from every organization get Co-posted onto that Instagram account, like for example BSO's hosting a teach in. They'll Co host with through CU apartheid divest and that'll that like, that account serves as a place where All of these events that are organized during the coalition are basically like kept track of on that account.” See, Audio at 01:48:04

• School Newspaper “But I would recommend if your like, if your school newspaper doesn't like, update the signatories as they keep going. Like if they're not willing to do that, it's better to have it on your own site probably. But ours updates whenever I send them the organizations so.”  See, Audio at 01:48:31

• Manifesto, Right to Resist. “So I think that, when you're talking about the right to resist, we debated including that in our manifesto, and I wanted to, but then I realized like organizations like the Muslim Students Association being signed on to a coalition that explicitly says something about the right to resist after October 7th might endanger them, especially because they were the ones who were doxxed. SJP wasn't even doxxed. They're so bad at dox, they didn't find any of us. They only found MSA, but like it was just like a tense time in which like all of us internally agreed on the right to resist. putting that in the open manifesto would endanger people further.. But it's really important to know internally that you guys like agree on that. And honestly, if I could go back, I might, I might have added it if,  because I think that, like with the coalition, I underestimated how much support that would provide us to be, like, more radical openly.”  See, Audio at 01:50:03.  See Photo.

• Manifesto, From the River to the Sea. “I would recommend just looking over the manifesto that I sent in the chat because we formatted that with the whole like all the representatives from different orgs, to make sure that everybody was on board while also not compromising on any of our principles and that we, we refused to like condemn. Also, oh, there's one thing that came up when you were discussing, was talking about from the river to the sea because Zionists at our school are, in general, have been trying to tell us that that's anti-Semitic or like calling for genocide. And we wanted, some people wanted to like, address that in the manifesto and be like, no, it's not about this, about like, call for liberation.  But I didn't want to do that specifically because I'm the one who insisted on using from the river to sea in our protests. And I don't believe that we should, like, have to respond to Zionist frameworks in our manifesto because our manifesto is proactive, not reactive, right? I don't think that we should have to condemn resistance, talk about how from the resistance is actually not a call for genocide or any of the distractions they try to impose on us.” See, Audio at 01:51:14.  See Photo.

• Pressure. “Yeah, I would definitely think that it's important to create those solidarity groups because they can also help put pressure on, create outreach because I got the Broadly, South Asian organization club ZAMANA to sign on yesterday because I put them on blast on my on my personal Instagram and everybody reposted it and then they just like did it to save face, which I don't think is a good approach generally. But I was just like pissed off at them. But I think it's best if you do start like a South Asian for Palestine group because that allows you to put pressure on cultural organizations that want to remain apolitical otherwise.” See, Video and Audio at 01:53:27.  See Photo.

• Legal and Security:  “I don't want to say too much because I probably shouldn't expose our organizational structure, but we do have a legal committee and a security committee in which we have lawyers from Pal legal and other organizations that like if we run into any sort of legal issue or like possible issue, we'll just notify the group chat… Also we have a Columbia law students for Palestine. They've been so helpful. They like they they act as legal observers during our protests. They provide so much, like, help when anything goes wrong. So it's really important to have like a network of legal support in your coalition. So that if any possible thing comes up, you can just text them in the signal group chat and alert them and like have a security team at all your protests be in, just be in contact with the lawyers at all times. That's really important. And I think alumni networks can also really help with that.” See, Audio at 01:55:12. See, Video posted by StuStuStudio on X.

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