How pro-Palestine student activists are fighting increasing repression

This article How pro-Palestine student activists are fighting increasing repression was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

The student movement for Palestine is once again in the news following reports that ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestine organizing at Columbia University. The Trump administration appears to be delivering on its promise to go after foreign students who participate in the movement for Palestine. Trump has already passed several executive orders as part of this McCarthyist attack on universities.

The outrage against Khalil’s detention is clear. In just over a day, a petition calling for Khalil’s release has been sent over 2.3 million times. Student Workers of Columbia, the union representing instructors, teacher assistants and researchers at Columbia released a statement denouncing the Department of Homeland Security and ICE’s presence on Columbia’s campus — as well as demanding the reinstatement of the university’s sanctuary policy to protect international students.

On March 10, over 1,500 New Yorkers marched through Manhattan demanding Khalil’s release, according to PROTEST NYC. That same day a federal judge blocked Khalil’s deportation.

The attack on Khalil has put university activism for Palestine in the national spotlight, but even before his detention, the movement has been fighting increasing repression. For well over a year, universities across the United States have been one of the most important arenas of pro-Palestine activism. This became clear last spring when student activists at more than 100 college campuses across the U.S. launched Gaza solidarity encampments to protest Israel’s war on Gaza and apartheid policies toward the Palestinian people. These encampments also highlighted how universities throughout the United States make Israel’s anti-Palestinian policies possible through investments in the state of Israel and the U.S. weapons industry.

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The encampment wave made national headlines and drew comparisons to the historic movement against the Vietnam War. In the aftermath of the encampment wave, which ended in part due to violent police raids against student activists and mass arrests across the country, university administrators, politicians at the state level, and the Trump administration have all been ramping up attacks on the university movement for Palestine.

As a result of the increasingly hostile environment for pro-Palestine activism, some in the movement are thinking of how to build campaigns that channel broader opposition to the attacks the movement is facing. One person trying to build this perspective is Sammie Lewis, a community activist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who is facing felony charges for participating in the Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of Michigan.

“The encampment served as this space to really bridge any gaps that there were between students and non-students,” Lewis said. “I think that what the state and what the university fails to understand is that the more they repress us the more we will stand together.”

Lewis is one of 12 community activists facing charges for engaging in two separate protests on campus (the encampment and a die-in, which took place in fall). Lewis argued that it is essential to build public support for the activists as a way to politicize the larger community against attacks on the movement for Palestine, and to get the charges dropped. As part of this effort the activists have gotten community members to pack the court anytime they have gone before a judge.

“We’ve had really good shows of support where the court has actually had to limit how many people are allowed in,” Lewis said. “They had to also, at times, clear the court so that our people could go in, and with that there’s still people in the halls.”

The activists have made an effort to provide public updates to keep the community informed about the case and have begun reaching out to activists fighting repression in other cities.

Lewis added that this perspective comes in part from their participation in the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising and organizing against repression of that movement.

“During that time there was a lot stronger of a ‘drop the charges’ campaign nationally, and you know times are different now,” Lewis said. “But I think it’s still really important to have that national campaign.”

In New York City, Lucien, a pro-Palestine activist at the City University of New York, or CUNY, has been organizing to support eight community activists facing felony charges for their participation in CUNY’s Gaza solidarity encampment. Lucien, who asked to only use his first name to avoid retaliation from the university, has also been in communication with the University of Michigan activists. He mentioned that both the University of Michigan and CUNY leaned into bringing out broader community support to their encampments, taking advantage of the public nature of the two universities.

“Painting people as outside agitators in the media and then charging them with intense charges for participating in an encampment at an open public university goes against the very public nature of what CUNY is,” Lucien said. “This is an institution paid for by the taxpayers of New York accountable to the communities that the campuses are in.”

Like the University of Michigan activists facing charges, the “CUNY 8” have packed the court with supporters from the community. They have even received support from Mumia Abu-Jamal, a well-known political prisoner from the Black freedom struggle.

“One of the things that has been really moving for me to see is the intergenerational support coming from an older generation of political prisoners,” Lucien said.

He added that faculty at CUNY have played an important role in resisting the attacks that students are facing. He mentioned a few moments during the encampment where rank-and-file union members organized to support the students. This included faculty blocking the entrance to the encampment and chanting “To get to our students, you’ll have to get through us.” CUNY faculty also held a grassroots assembly where hundreds of workers voted to support the pro-Palestine demands put forward by the encampment, and organized a wildcat sick-out against attacks on the encampment.

Lucien added that many of the initiatives from CUNY faculty have been organized despite opposition from their own union leadership. “I would like to see the leadership of the [union] show up against this repression,” he said. “That has not happened, which I think is really an abdication of their responsibility.”

There have been other powerful examples of university faculty organizing in support for the student movement. At the University of California, university workers organized in UAW Local 4811 went on strike to defend their students’ right to protest for Palestine. In December 2024, two different faculty unions at Rutgers University passed resolutions calling for Rutgers and the American Federation of Teachers to divest from Israel. Earlier this year CUNY faculty went even further and voted for their own union to divest from Israel.

Lucien also spoke to the importance of a campaign against repression at the national level.

“The playbook is being replicated because these administrators are looking at what each other are doing. They’re in conversation with one another, coordinating national strategy around repressing the movement,” Lucien said. “As a movement we need to be in conversation with each other about how to tune our strategy to push back against this repression.”

Despite the crackdown on the movement, there is broad support for those organizing in solidarity with Palestine. A recent Gallup Poll shows that Americans’ sympathy for Palestinians has reached a record high, while support for Israel is at its lowest level in at least 25 years.

Lewis believes that the repression of the movement is galvanizing people in the movement to show even stronger solidarity with one another.

“The charges are actually fueling us to fight more and to fight harder,” Lewis said.

They added that the fight against repression is an important opportunity to show that the attacks on the movement are connected to the oppression of Palestinians and attacks on other oppressed peoples.

“We want people talking about this,” Lewis said. “We want people to understand how it’s connected to the protesters that are facing charges where they are. We want people to understand how it’s connected to everything. That if our rights are being stripped away from us then it’s only before time that it’ll happen to them. Right now it’s for Palestine, but what’s next?”

This article How pro-Palestine student activists are fighting increasing repression was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/pro-palestine-student-activists-are-fighting-increasing-repression/