Palestine Tet – 141 – A Day of Solidarity With Palestine in Denver, Colorado

Palestine: Centering Palestinian Voices: What Has Been Missing in Our Conversations About Palestine. University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. May 21, 2024

Last night… I promised myself to only go to one “Gaza – Free Palestine event a day but it ended up I went to three, the last two with Nancy. At the University of Denver, Korbel School of International Studies there was an event I thought I’d never see in my lifetime – a forum with five Palestinians speaking to a full house – perhaps 300 people about their situations, their struggles – unfiltered Palestinian voices, all so soft-spoken, so humane, so anti-racist down to their bones. Informative. I never thought I’d see an event like this at D.U.- Korbel.

The news had filtered down that the University – the Chancellor – was going to call security to shut down the campus encampment and as the forum ended, many of us poured out of Korbel onto the open area where the encampment was taking place to show our support, our solidarity. At least for the time we were present, this did not happen. For me the past mingled with the present. In 1970 it was not just about Vietnam, but a call from students then to reform, renew the university and the broader society itself, get back to teaching and learning … and about young people trying to define the kind of future they hoped for in our country.

And so it was last night… fifty four years later.as Israel, U.S. proxy in the Middle East, continued to bomb and starve Gazan Palestinians and as President Biden’s chances for re-election continue to slip away as a result of his support for a genocide he denies is taking place that Nancy and I stayed about an hour, during which time the numbers present swelled from fifty or so to 3, 4, 500 – I don’t know. There was a strong presence of the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace which moved me deeply. A spirited, profoundly humane affair in which students and some supporting faculty “took back” the university from its rich donors who falsely believe they “own the place”, but they don’t.

I was told, by a faculty member friend that rather than face arrest that the encampment group was going to close shop and regroup for the summer and fall, all of which seemed reasonable, flexible tactic. In the middle of the night my mind flashed back to early May 1970 when as students at the University of Colorado – Boulder, we – again hundreds of us, stormed Regents Hall, in search for the university’s military contract. As the national guard came, surrounding the building, with the metal of bayonets flashing in the darkness, we stormed out again, just minutes before the national guard, called by Regent Joe Coors,  were about to storm the building and turn their guns on unarmed students as was done at Kent State and Jackson State.

While the D.U. students at the encampment focused their criticism, rightly so, on the school’s Chancellor and Provost who refused to meet with them, I had to wonder about the role of the school’s secretive – and not particularly insightful Board of Trustees who pretty much run the Chancellor and Provost and those wealthy donors pressing the Chancellor to crush the encampment.  Attempts to disrupt the encampment by a small group of students failed.