I still remember April 1968 when students rebelled at Columbia University. That movement was the beginning of militant anti-Vietnam war protests. I was part of those militant protests. We were trying to bring the US troops home and stop the war that made Agent Orange infamous and saw the deaths of millions of people in Indo-China. I learned a lot about imperialism and colonialism. I learned about resistance and repression. Especially resistance.

 

Columbia University, the same university that sparked the 1968 revolt, has again sparked an uprising that to date has spread to over 40 campuses in the US. Is what’s happening now a harbinger of a movement that strengthens as time goes on, becoming an uprising that cannot be denied? I hope so. 

 

There are so many parallels now as I experienced then, especially with politicians calling the protesters violent and using whatever they could seize to discredit us. In real time the protesters are again being accused of being violent. Violent. What about the fact that Israel has killed almost 35,000 Palestinian civilians with the complicity (and funding) of the US government and other western powers? Israel has branded the protesters terrorists and uses anti-semitism as a weapon against those who are for peace in Palestine while Israel commits genocide against the Palestinian people. 

 

As was the Vietnam war, the Israeli war on Gaza is also an ecological disaster – a toxic nightmare amongst the rubble. Today The Guardian reported Israel’s war in Gaza has created 37m tonnes of debris, much of it laced with unexploded bombs, which could take more than a decade to remove, a top UN de-mining official said.  Nearly seven months into the war, there is an average 300kg of rubble per square metre of land in Gaza.’

 

The other day President Joe Biden signed a bill authorizing $95 billion in “aid” to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, mostly for war efforts, stating without any irony that it was “a good day for world peace”–just as George Orwell said, “War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbles would have been proud.

 

As hope still flickers in Palestine, a dark cloud of madness hangs over the US. The powers that be are giving the people a choice between Joe Biden or Donald Trump this November. For sanities sake let the student rebellion prove to be a path for liberation in the US and challenge the American people to think outside of the prison walls of Corporate-controlled “democracy.”

 

– Orin Langelle