Palestine Tet – 140 – Three Gaza Encampments Spring Up on Colorado Campuses – 2

Colorade House Rep Elizabeth Epps speaking. Rob Prince and Linda Badwan in the background. UCCS encampment. May 9, 2024. (Photo credit: Megan Moen; UCCS student newspaper, The Scribe)

An interesting and I think fruitful mix.

• Colorado House Rep Elizabeth Epps, one of the most humane, progressive – and by my accounts – intelligent and heard working members of the Colorado Legislature, currently up for re-election. In her first contest, pro-Zionists spent recond-breaking amounts of $ to try to defeat her. Now they are at it again. Typically (insideous) slanderous campaigan to try to defeat her with AIPAC and the like once again leading the charge, a charge by the way that is as racist and misogynist as any can be.
• Linda Badwan. She is pervasive, to my mind the classic example of an organizer. She grew up in the West Bank near Ramallah during the first Intifada (1986-1990) and there isn’t much she and her family have seen or experienced where it concerns Israel’s seethingly repressive occupation of Palestine. Gaza, her people, her family on her mind 24/7. Has learned how to transform unending pain and suffering into professional-level organizing. Really good at it – actually better than that. Mostly behind the scenes trying to involve more folk, give substance and reason to militancy but when she does speak publicly, a humane and powerful voice for her people.
• Rob Prince (me) – A misplaced NYC Jew who got off a bus from Chicago in the Spring of 1969, looked around, could not help blurting out “This ain’t Brooklyn” as he got off the bus. Magically – as such things never happen anymore – 1. Was accepted into a PhD program at U.C.-Boulder  –    – 2. Got a job teachng at what was then Red Rocks Community College in Golden Colorado and …                     – 3. met one Nancy Fey sitting on a boulder in Rulison Colorado trying to stop a federal project to detonate an underground nuclear blast “fracking with a nuclear weapon” … and, I never left the great state of Colorado. Oh yes, have been an anti-Zionist Jew all these years.

2.

After leaving the University of Denver’s encampment we headed down to Colorado Springs in a light rain, arriving around 4. The University of Colorado – Colorado Springs (UCCS) sits on a hill on the northeast side of town. The encampment is small – 25 people or so, mostly students with a few faculty members stopping by. Fine group of young folk who had to something to make a statement of their opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the U.S. support – or is it management? – of the Israeli slaughter machine.

Two days before our arrival, we were told, local police – including snipers – stood on the roofs just above the encampment just outside the student center.

In a statement posted on “X” the encampment noted:

“Last night while demonstrating on UCCS Campus to bring attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and invasion of Rafah, police immediately deployed and confiscated our tents. Student’s property sitting outside of their cars wsa confiscated. Police aggressively removed students’ property from their possession. Student protesters’ movement became controlled and limited. Campus police refused to allow us into the buildings to access bathrooms. When they relented, we had to be escorted by faculty. Betwen 6-9:30 pm we sat peacefully and did not attempt to put up more tents. We were still threatened with arrests that would begin at 10pm. As much as administration is adamant that they support students’ Freedom of Speech, the aggression and intimidation tacts used on 5/7/24 say otherwise. The chancellor (Jennifer Sobanet) has not responded to our demands since our meeting on 5/6/24. Today she sent an email to all students defneding the campus’s response to protesters. She ended with reminding students that if we feel unsafe on campus, we can call campus police. UCCS SJP is not a threat to UCCS students, on the contrary, we are the only students who have been targeted.

Viva Palestinia!

Viva Intifada!

This intimidating overkill presence had disappeared by the time we arrived but that the Colorado Springs authorities would threaten such a peaceful gathering – and in this instance it included no seizure of buildings, no disruption of the university’s activities and turn its guns (that admittedly it didn’t fire) on a completely peaceful gathering of students – one has to ask … what’s the deal? Why the overreaction – and of course not just at UCCS but nationwide?

In an interview conducted by Dialogue Works podcaster Nima R. Alkhorshid, Brazilian world traveler and political commentator Pepe Escobar explains:

This is not a protest against ‘the Empire’ per se. This is a protest agains the pro-Zionist Project. This is instilling the fear of the nine circles of hell – to quote Dante – into the American establishment because it is not only the fact tht this administration – or many outside over the Beltway (Washington elite) in general of Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC – not to mention New York, the financial center – they support genocide in Gaza – but they are questioning the Zionist Project per se. And that is – as we all know – an absolute no-no in the U.S. That explains the police treating the students as they do, criminalizing student protests which is something unbelievable.

How can they possibly spin that when they are spinning all the time that America is the biggest democracy on earth, the human rights, all that crap? This is unspinnable.

The UCCS encampment has been very busy, productive. Their activites included a visit with the university’s Chancellor in which the following demands to the university were spelled out:

1. UCCS shall immediately make a statement condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing genocide of Gaza
2. UCCS shall immediately disclose where its $1.5 billion endowment is invested
3. UCCS shall immediately disclose any and all ties to israel and Israeli companies or universities
4. UCCS shall immediately cut ties from Lockheed Mrtin and any other arms’ dealers and U.S. Armed Forces
5. UCCS shal divest funds into Palestinian aid and relief such as UNRWA.

Taken together these demands for policy changes essentially pivot around two issues: disassociating UCCS from U.S. support of Israeli genocide and disconnecting it from cooperation with the military industrial complex.

We arrived in a light rain and were greeted with such warmth and a spirit of deep non-violence from the Students for Justice in Palestine group. Rather than hearing our thoughts on the current situation – there was some of that – instead, what the SJP folk were more interested in was how and why the three of us had gotten involved in criticizing Israel and supporting Palestinian rights.

Linda Badwan related experiences as a child in the West Bank near Ramallah during the first Intifada, watching young Palestinians back then (1986-1990) being roughed up, arrested and shot dead by the Israeli Defense Force, of the degrading treatment Palestinians experienced at check points and of the fear her boys experience when the family has gone to visit Palestine. Elizabeth Epps spoke of growing up in Northern Virginia, of her mother who explained to her as a kid why Palestine was important. Her momd took her to demonstrations as a kid; she also spoke of a circle of anti-Zionist Jews she knew in high school, her friends, who . By the time she hit adulthood she was well aware. I related the years spent in the Peace Corps (1966-8) during which the June, 1967 War took place and what it was like watchnig that war from Tunis rather than Brooklyn and how it had, at first, confused and effected me.

The students asked a number of questions, several of them quite practical that we tried to address. Later we found out that our presence was well received and appreciated.

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Part One