Goldman Sachs, the infamous Wall Street “vampire squid” (aptly so dubbed by Matt Taibbi), wants to scare the hell out of us. It reports that more than 300 million jobs worldwide could be affected negatively by artificial intelligence programs and that “roughly two-thirds of U.S. occupations are exposed to some degree of automation by AI.”

How convenient! Wall Street is off the hook. They aren’t job killers – AI is. And there’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it, because there’s no stopping science and technology from their god-like domination of society. AI will gobble up your job and you will just have to make do.

Big finance knows we’ll eat this up because we always do. Since the dawn of the industrial era, we’ve been fascinated by the power and prowess of modern machinery. We love stories about robots and computers taking over the world, fighting us to the finish. It is, after all, truly amazing what we, the recent descendants of chimpanzees, are capable of inventing. We have to marvel when making a phone call to the other side of the world in a split second. And it is indeed chilling to have AI programs write us a heartfelt love poem in an instant.

So yes, we are inclined to believe that AI is the most powerful, far reaching job killer to ever have roamed the planet. But it isn’t. In terms of jobs loss, it’s just a distraction, the shiny object that gets our attention while Wall Street picks our pockets.

More than 300 Wall Street hedge funds feasted at the trough. There’s your job killer.

The same Wall Street firms and their media cousins that want us to marvel at the shock and awe of AI, are destroying jobs the old-fashioned way – through stock buybacks. They kill jobs in order to stuff more money into their pockets and they’d greatly prefer us not to notice.

There is a direct connection with most mass layoffs and stock buybacks, but seldom if ever is that reported. Hell will freeze over before Goldman Sachs issues a report that shows how stock buybacks are destroying the jobs of millions of working people while enriching the already wealthy.

For those new to this game, a stock buyback is when a company uses its revenues to buy back its own shares to boost their price. Yes, this is stock manipulation, and it was once outlawed. Now it’s legal and companies are using nearly 70 percent of all their earnings to buy back and boost the price of their own shares.

Why? Reason number one is that Wall Street firms, usually big hedge funds, will buy up a company’s stocks with borrowed money, gain a certain amount of control, and then demand the company buy back stock so the hedge fund makes a killing in a hurry.

Reason number two is that CEOs receive most of their compensation through stock incentives. Boost the price of shares through stock buybacks and CEOs instantly get richer.

How to pay for all this? Through mass layoffs, orders of magnitude greater than AI. In January 2024 there were 82,307 job cuts in the economy. Only 381 were due to AI.

But wait. That’s right now. In the future might not the numbers reverse? After all, AI’s journey has just begun.

Indeed, it has, but as I detail in Wall Street’s War on Workers, virtually every study of the job impact of automation shows that it’s a very slow process. Also, the entry of automation doesn’t necessarily mean that the number of jobs in an automated industry will decline. After robots marched through the auto industry, overall employment actually increased. In Japan, the world’s leader in automotive robotics, the auto industry provides lifetime guaranteed employment.

Sure, this time it could be different, with AI proving to be an exceptional job killer. But that belief is based on fantasy and fear, amplified by the media, and not by actually examining the causes of job loss. In our economy, the big job killer is stock buybacks.

In 2023, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft announced 43,000 layoffs. Yet just before those announcements, in the third quarter of 2022 alone, these companies conducted $28 billion in stock buybacks. In the past five years, they have used $383 billion in stock buybacks to boost their stock prices. More than 300 Wall Street hedge funds feasted at the trough. There’s your job killer. (For the gory details see Chapter 11 of Wall Street’s War on Workers.)

How do we stop them?

The policy part is easy to imagine. Once again prohibit stock manipulation by outlawing stock buybacks. Also, attach one simple clause to every corporation getting a federal contract – no compulsory layoffs during the life of the contract. You can’t take taxpayer money (amounting to approximately $700 billion a year) if you’re going to force taxpayers out of their jobs. If you want to lay someone off it must be voluntary, which means you have to buy them out. You don’t want to do that? Don’t take the federal money.

The hard part is building a movement big enough to force politicians to take on Wall Street. We estimate that 30 million of us have gone through a mass layoff since 1996. Count the families of laid off workers and probably half of the U.S. workforce has been negatively affected by mass layoffs. The labor movement needs to make mass layoffs a major cause and build a new organization that mobilizes this constituency – something like Workers United Against Mass Layoffs! If millions join, maybe politicians will start to listen.

To get there, however, we first need to defeat the technological fatalism that make layoffs feel inevitable and unstoppable.

Financial looting, not AI = Mass Layoffs!

As the fourth negotiating session on the United Nations plastics treaty comes to a close, pressing questions loom: Will world leaders finalize a robust agreement by the end of this year that effectively halts plastic pollution at its source? Despite the fortitude of countries within the High Ambition Coalition like Rwanda and Peru, negotiations on the agenda of intersessional work leading up to the final session in November in Busan, Korea, left the crucial aspect of reducing plastic production off the table.

Divergence surrounding the root causes of plastic pollution was ignited by the overwhelming presence of the fossil fuel and chemical industry. And their impact was not hard to miss, with pro-plastic campaigners outside the Shaw Center where negotiations were held and nearly 200 lobbyists registering for the talks, even joining country delegations, according to a Center for International Environmental Law analysis. Their influence is far-reaching. Notably, the U.S., being the world’s largest contributor to plastic waste, has not taken a stance on production.

The full plastic lifecycle—from creation to waste—represents an ocean justice crisis.

I conveyed this message on Earth Day during a youth coalition meeting with U.S. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Welch (D-Vt.), and Representative Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). I advocated for the negotiators to prioritize increasing protections for human rights and ocean health by centering justice.

Despite widespread discussions on the environmental and human health risks of plastics, there is still a noticeable gap in recognizing the interconnected injustices they perpetuate—though the Global Youth Coalition on Plastic Pollution and Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus were adamant about these connections in their plenary statements. While plastics impact everyone—microplastics are in our air, food, water, soil, and bodies, even human placentas—disproportionate negative impacts occur across race, occupation, ethnicity, class, gender, and age.

Outside the plastics context, voices like Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson have brought justice to the forefront of ocean conservation, while Leah Thomas is the leading activist for Intersectional Environmentalism. As a Gen Z advocate deeply immersed in ocean advocacy, in my view, this is what the plastics conversation still needs: utilizing an intersectional approach to shed light on how the full plastic lifecycle—from creation to waste—represents an ocean justice crisis.

Ocean Health

Upon returning from the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (INC-4), I went to the beach for rest and was, paradoxically, as usual, immediately picking up plastic waste. And still, I acknowledge my privileged position–that ocean currents are naturally not bringing as much pollution to the North Carolina coast as they are to vulnerable island countries. Each year 11 million metric tons of plastic enter the seas, devastating wildlife, contaminating seafood, and polluting beaches. But, those most severely affected are often the least culpable: island countries, Indigenous Peoples, and the Global South. This pollution is compounded by the plastic loads high GDP countries export to the Global South, a trend called “waste colonialism.”

Undeniably, the ocean is profoundly impacted by plastic pollution, evident in the vast gyres twice the size of Texas and the grim prediction that by 2050, 99% of seabirds will have ingested plastics.

Not only does this pollution entangle marine life and release toxic chemicals, scientists are beginning to worry it is threatening the ability of the ocean to sequester carbon. Zooplankton are microscopic animals that are now replacing their plant diet with microplastics, and this trend on a large scale is hypothesized to hinder the release of carbon to the deep sea.

Human Rights

Despite widespread support by countries for including human rights in the plastics treaty, there are no obligations to protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples, of informal waste pickers whose livelihoods depend on plastic collection, or of anyone. In a report, Earth Law Center reviewed nearly 400 statements across 175 member states to the INC and mapped support by country. Unsurprisingly, regions across the Global South experiencing the brunt of plastic pollution and human rights injustices demonstrated the highest support.

Right now, the word “justice” is not in the plastics treaty text at all.

Many people don’t know not to microwave plastic. Just as many are not aware that there are 16,000 chemicals associated with plastics and over 1 in 4 are hazardous to people. Or that microplastics are found in human blood and we don’t know the consequences yet. However, this awareness is largely not the fault of the public. The plastic industry intentionally keeps us in the dark, having us thinking that plastic is non-toxic and safe to use, and even fooling us that recycling is the end-all solution. Banning and phasing out concerning chemicals and single-use plastics while increasing plastic literacy is key to protecting human rights, ensuring industries are transparent, and empowering everyone to make informed decisions.

Justice

According to U.N. Environment Program, the plastic lifecycle is a barrier to every Sustainable Development Goal. Without immediate action to reduce plastic production, we risk our chance to keep the 1.5°C target within reach. Much like the case of climate change, those who bear the worst impacts of plastics gain the fewest benefits from their production or use. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities are disproportionately harmed by toxic chemicals and emissions from unfair proximity to petrochemical and incineration facilities. Women and people who menstruate are exposed to microplastics within period products. The bottom line is plastics exacerbate inequities and harm those most vulnerable among us.

Right now, the word “justice” is not in the plastics treaty text at all. As the outcomes of negotiations unfold, I hope that plastics will be reframed as what they truly are: an ocean justice crisis. The treaty, slated for finalization by the end of 2024, represents a pivotal opportunity to safeguard human rights and address injustice. There are undeniable implications for people, the ocean, and truly, the planet at stake.

Earlier this year, thousands of New Hampshire voters received robocalls with audio of what sounded like President Joe Biden's voice telling them to stay home during the state's primary election. But the recording wasn't really Biden: It was a "deepfake" generated with AI technology. The state Attorney General's Office Election Law Unit ultimately identified the source of the false AI-generated recording as two Texas-based companies, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom. In response to the incident, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned robocalls with AI-generated voices.

Deepfakes are fraudulent audio, video, or images created or edited with AI. As the technology becomes more accessible, advocates fear that attempts to mislead voters will become more common. "The political deepfake moment is here. Policymakers must rush to put in place protections or we're facing electoral chaos," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, in a statement. "The New Hampshire deepfake is a reminder of the many ways that deepfakes can sow confusion and perpetuate fraud."

In addition to swaying voters' attitudes toward candidates, AI could be used to undermine the administration of elections by spreading disinformation to curb voter turnout. The disenfranchising effects of high-tech deception will likely be compounded in the South, a region with a troubled history of election-related deception, and voters already face growing obstacles to participation.

Voter suppression rooted in disinformation is nothing new in the South, but the emergence of new technologies has the potential to add harmful burdens for already marginalized groups of voters. These suppressive efforts are increasing as communities of color have grown in political power. Right-wing lawmakers have weaponized disinformation by deploying allegations of widespread election fraud to stoke distrust in the U.S. electoral system and to sell policies that suppress the vote to their advantage. Many of these tactics have roots in Jim Crow-era efforts to disenfranchise people of color through blatant voter intimidation strategies. Policies like poll taxes mandated Black voters to pay to register to vote, and literacy tests required them to read a passage of the constitution, while "grandfather clauses" spared whites from such requirements.

New technologies historically bring more systematic attempts to suppress voters of color through "racialized disinformation" via mailing, robocalls, and other forms of mass communication. For example, in 1990, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms's campaign sent 150,000 postcards targeting Black North Carolinians that included incorrect voting information and threatened arrests for voter fraud. More recently, in 2016, Black voters were directly targeted by Russian bots in online efforts to spread disinformation, according to a report by Deen Freelon from the University of North Carolina. The research showed that false social media accounts masked as Black users during the 2016 presidential election exploited racial tension in the United States to suppress voter turnout in Black communities.

In 2018, social media accounts published misleading voting information, including directions to vote by text and claims that voters of one party were instructed to vote the day after Election Day. During the 2020 presidential election, widespread incidents of digital disinformation occurred. For instance, on election day in Texas's presidential primary, robocalls misleadingly instructed some people that voting would occur a day later in an attempt to deceive voters into showing up at polling locations too late to cast a ballot lawfully.

With the rise of AI, voting advocates worry that the lack of effective protections against digital disinformation will influence this fall's election. "While it remains unclear how much AI will change the face of vote suppression in the 2024 general election, new developments in AI use and capabilities lend fresh urgency to long-standing efforts to abate attempts to subvert elections", wrote Mekela Panditharatne, who serves as counsel for the Brennan Center's Elections & Government Program.

Regulating AI

A flood of new legislation across the South is attempting to address the growing concerns about the ways AI can be used to influence elections. As of April, 44 states have either introduced or enacted legislation regulating election-related deepfakes. The majority of bills have been passed with bipartisan support.

In 2019, Texas became the first state to ban deepfake videos that intend to "injure a candidate or influence the result of an election" within 30 days if an election. Updates to the measure are now being considered after a recent "deepfaked" mailer paid for by the Jeff Yass-financed Club for Growth Action PAC, targeted House Speaker Dade Phelan and former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, falsely depicting the pair hugging. State lawmakers are now calling for the law to be expanded to include radio, sound, speech, and text. Earlier this year, Florida's General Assembly passed a measure mandating that political ads that include deepfake content have a disclaimer. Recently, in Alabama, the state House passed a bill that bans the distribution of deepfakes within 90 days before an election unless the content includes a disclaimer. The bill is now awaiting passage in the Senate.

Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in Congress that would ban the dissemination of false AI-generated content to influence an election, but no federal laws have been passed. Two Democrats, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Chris Coons (Del.), and two Republicans, Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Susan Collins (Maine), are currently pushing legislation that would ban deceptive AI content in political ads. Recently, at a Senate subcommittee hearing titled "Oversight of AI: Election Deepfakes," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) showed how artificial intelligence can be used to subvert the democratic process. Blumenthal, who serves as the chair of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, said deepfake images and videos are "disturbingly easy" for anyone to create.

In his remarks, Blumenthal referenced the New Hampshire deepfake call as a stark example of how rampant digital disinformation can interfere in elections. "That's what suppression of voter turnout looks like," he said.

At many college campuses, students are protesting in opposition to the Biden Administration’s unconditional backing, with weapons and diplomatic cover, of Netanyahu’s continuing serial war crimes slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, most of them children and women. Hundreds of faculty members are defending these valiant youngsters and criticizing excessively harsh crackdowns by failed University presidents who are calling in outside police.

With graduations approaching, pro-Netanyahu lobbies and cowed University heads (like Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who makes a salary of over $2,000 an hour) expect the students to disperse from campus for the summer and end their demonstrations.

The Israeli genocidal crimes against Gazans will continue and intensify if Israel invades Rafah. Millions of refugees will suffer. What will become of the organized student calls for a permanent ceasefire, greatly increased humanitarian aid and cessation of U.S. weapons shipments? The students who leave their campus protests can and should focus on members of Congress in their Districts and in Washington.

Our government is fueling an Empire producing disasters that are conducted in the name of the powerless American people, whose sovereign powers under our Constitution are delegated to Congress and the Executive Branch. The abuse of this power starts with Congress.

In two weeks, hundreds of Congressional summer student interns will begin arriving to work in Congressional offices. Congress is the decades-long reservoir for Israeli colonial aggression. Moreover, Congress, under AIPAC’s extraordinary pressure, has blocked testimony by prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates since 1948. Not once have any of these peace advocates, many of whom are Israeli retired cabinet ministers, mayors, security and military leaders been invited to a Congressional Committee Hearing.

This power center for the U.S. Empire – Capitol Hill – presents serious students with an opportunity to educate their elders. Such an opportunity materialized during the Vietnam War when Congressional interns in the late 1960s organized a highly visible petition drive and engaged in peaceful protests.

Back in the Congressional Districts, the access is easier and available to many more students and faculty. Because Congress is in “recess” for much of the summer – Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and the entire month of August to Labor Day – students and citizens can demand public meetings preceded by formal summons to Senators and Representatives. (See my column “Sending Citizens Summons to Members of Congress”).

Five hundred to a thousand clearly legible signatures with the individuals’ occupations and emails should get these politicians to your well-prepared community meetings.

There would be no more notorious incommunicado behavior, laced with robo-letters to inquiring constituents. Instead, there would be person-to-person questioning, dialogue, and responses where evasions and sweet talk will be more difficult for the lawmakers to utilize.

The subject matter of these public meetings can extend beyond ghastly scenes of dead, dying, sick, and starving families in Gaza to Biden’s foreign and military policies. Our government is fueling an Empire producing disasters that are conducted in the name of the powerless American people, whose sovereign powers under our Constitution are delegated to Congress and the Executive Branch. The abuse of this power starts with Congress.

Nothing can compare to face-to-face meetings with the lawmakers. Letters, phone calls, and emails rarely can be relied on to reach them directly – that is if you are not a big campaign contributor. Besides, unlike in the past, today’s legislative staffers are much more likely to ignore these missives without even an acknowledgment. (See The Incommunicados report: https://incommunicadoswatch.org/).

A people’s town meeting has an agenda set by the people. Some suggestions follow:

1. There have been no Congressional hearings since before October 7th on the overall policies in the Middle East pursued by the White House and Congress. The House and Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees have not been active. Instead, there have been show hearings berating University presidents to stifle free speech on their campuses and answer hypothetical questions about anti-semitism against Jews but not the other ongoing Congressionally weaponized anti-semitism against Gazan Arabs, who are Semites, being annihilated in that tiny enclave. Disgraceful! Demand public hearings for the citizenry.

2. Make U.S. engagements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a major electoral campaign issue for November. This is a major opportunity to get the direct attention of the 535 lawmakers and to push them to stop kicking the can down the road. The decades-long control of Congress by the “Israeli-government-can-do-no-wrong lobby” must end. There is too much massive, preventable suffering being ignored in the Middle East, too much danger of wider regional wars involving the super-powers, and too much damage to civil liberties and democratic processes in our own country to avoid these matters any longer.

3. The students and teachers will find allies in their Congressional Districts from long-time advocates like the American Friends Committee (Quakers), the Unitarians, united Jewish, Christian, and Muslim peace groups, the increasing numbers of outspoken labor union leaders, and just plain Americans fed up with the costly U.S. Empire and its military-industrial complex (remember President Eisenhower’s warnings).

People want their tax dollars returned to the crucial public necessities back home. They don’t like big business controlling Congress and getting away with looting Uncle Sam by their out-of-control greed and power. Over 70% of Americans believe these big companies have too much control over their lives including many liberal and conservative families.

The laser-focused citizen pressure should be on those 535 members of YOUR Congress, their local offices, and their staff.

Larger reforms, redirections, and horizons of society often start with one compelling abuse or outrageous travesty of justice. This has occurred in the labor, farmer, consumer, environmental, and civil rights movements throughout our history.

There will be high-visibility protests outside the National Democratic Party Convention in Chicago and probable demonstrations at the National Republican Party Convention in Milwaukee this summer. But the laser-focused citizen pressure should be on those 535 members of YOUR Congress, their local offices, and their staff.

Change Congress and you change America! That is leverage!

In his 2024 State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden told America, “I want competition with China, not conflict.” He went on to say that, by his doing, the U.S. is now “in a stronger position to win the conflict of the 21st century against China.” The U.S. is not at war, but Biden warns of conflict. He is talking, I believe, about climate change, and he is declaring America’s involvement in a New Cold War. His climate policies, governed by a metaphor of competition between the U.S. and China, bode terribly for the world’s future.

The conflict of the 21st century that Biden refers to has already begun, and the president’s conflation of climate policy and foreign policy reflects that. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act marked the largest climate mitigation investment in American history, but its purpose was to serve as a shield for American workers in a trade war with China. While the bill subsidizes domestic green energy production and manufacturing in order to transition toward sustainability, its stated goal is to “advance America’s economic and foreign policy objectives.” The U.S. has since moved to build up domestic manufacturing, invest in green technologies, and shelter American workers from Chinese efficiency. Weeks ago, Biden threatened to triple tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports, and his treasury secretary called China’s excess of green energy exports “unacceptable from the U.S. point of view.” In the Climate Cold War, American profit matters more than global prosperity.

Another Cold War will gloss over the inequalities that have existed before and since the last one—and leave the world hotter too.

I’m 19, and I really, really don’t want to live through a Climate Cold War. I don’t want my future to be limited by minute technology changes and market solutions. I don’t want green energy to be weaponized for profit, and U.S. industry to be prioritized over the global climate. I find myself asking: What price is America willing to pay for a livable climate? Why doesn’t the rest of the world get a say? And why is it always a price? While the U.S. and China have contributed disproportionately to global warming, climate change impacts everyone—and everyone, not just American and Chinese politicians, should be involved in solutions. There is so much more than economic competition—so many more solutions than conflict. China is not the enemy, and global warming isn’t either. It’s the corporations that make the planet hotter, and the structures they’ve built to get us hooked on fossil fuels.

The last Cold War was a struggle between capitalism and communism. And just as in the last, American politicians see capitalism as the only solution to a global crisis. Climate change, however, is caused by endless extraction and unsustainable production. A New Cold War will divide the world just like the first one. The winners will be the same governments and corporations that can profit from a war machine, the losers the same poor nations and people who will be left to scramble in an uncertain world. A trade war between the U.S. and China amid the backdrop of global warming will ignore these people, who are in many cases the least responsible for climate change and yet the most affected.

People around the world are still recovering from the damage done to them since the last Cold War. It’s no coincidence that previous sites of American imperialism have been left particularly vulnerable to climate change. Left politically unstable from decades of American intervention, Afghanistan is facing and will continue to face its worst droughts yet. Devastated by the U.S. war, Vietnam is at risk of coastal flooding and is vulnerable to severe tropical storms. And Grenada, site of a Cold War invasion, lacks the resources to adapt to rising sea levels, degrading ecosystems, and frequent hurricanes. Another Cold War will gloss over the inequalities that have existed before and since the last one—and leave the world hotter too.

Neither conflict nor competition will mitigate the effects of climate change. True change will come from global cooperation, not trade wars between the two largest emitters. Even truer change won’t come from Washington or Beijing, but through local communities and ground-level changes. Climate change affects us all, some specifically more than others. As in the last Cold War, humanity is faced with some ultimate choices. This time around, we already pressed the big red button. While the world needs the U.S. and China’s efforts, a Climate Cold War between the two superpowers will only end in a nuclear summer. It’s hot enough already.

The United Auto Workers recently scored the largest union victory in decades in the South. Their success at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant could be a turning point for labor in a region long known for governmental hostility to unions.

The next test will be a UAW election scheduled for the week of May 13 at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama, a state that has attracted so much auto investment it has earned the nickname “the Detroit of the South.”

If the roughly 5,000 Mercedes workers vote to unionize, the ripple effects could empower workers nationwide.

We need a New South economic structure based on fairness and equity.

For decades, Southern states have pursued “low-road” development strategies, luring investors with massive public subsidies and repressive labor policies. This has pitted workers across the country against each other, undercutting everyone’s ability to secure fair compensation.

Alabama has spent $1.6 billion to woo Mercedes, along with Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda. All these foreign companies’ operations in the South are non-union, in contrast to the unionized Big Three of Ford, GM, and Stellantis.

This foreign investment has created thousands of Alabama jobs—but with weak worker protections, the state remains one of the nation’s poorest. And while these companies have enjoyed rising corporate profits, they have left workers behind.

An in-depth report by the nonprofit group Alabama Arise found that inflation-adjusted average pay for the state’s autoworkers has dropped by 11% over the past 20 years to $64,682. Meanwhile, CEO pay stands at $13.9 million at Mercedes and $6.9 million at Toyota.

The foreign-owned firms’ payrolls also reflect Alabama’s long history of racial discrimination, with Black and Latino workers earning substantially less than their white counterparts. By contrast, the Economic Policy Institute has found that union workers make 10.1% more on average than non-union workers.

The benefits are even greater for workers of color. Unionized Black workers make 13.1% more than non-union Black workers in comparable jobs—and Latino union members make 18.8% more than non-union Latino workers.

Equitable pay practices boost local economies by putting more money in workers’ pockets for groceries, housing, and other goods and services from local businesses. And that’s good for families of every color.

But Alabama Governor Kay Ivey doesn’t see things that way. Before the UAW vote in Tennessee, she joined GOP governors from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas to discourage VW workers from voting yes with unfounded threats of mass layoffs.

When 73% of those autoworkers voted for the UAW, it was a strong rebuke of the region’s low-road, anti-worker model. So corporate lobbyists in the region have enlisted state legislators and cabinet officials in a sustained campaign to blunt organizing momentum.

How will the election turn out in Alabama?

A new poll indicates that 52% of residents in this deep-red state support the autoworkers’ union drive, while just 21% are opposed. This echoes a 2022 poll commissioned by the Institute for Policy Studies in Jefferson County, Alabama, where workers were attempting to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer. That survey showed nearly two-thirds support.

While the Alabama Amazon campaign fell short in the face of aggressive anti-union tactics, increased public approval of unions is a testament to many years of community and labor organizing.

The fact that a large majority of workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant signed petitions earlier this year in support of the election is encouraging. We need a New South economic structure based on fairness and equity. Organized labor is an essential partner in that mission.

The $95 billion military and foreign aid package Congress passed was a remarkable feat of bipartisanship—and a calamity for decency and humanity.

That’s primarily because of the $15 billion in military aid to Israel. Unless President Joe Biden’s State Department recognizes Israel’s egregious violations of humanitarian law and withholds that aid, those U.S. funds will directly help the Israeli military perpetuate its assault on the people of Gaza—in which the International Court of Justice four months ago ordered Israel to “prevent death, destruction, and any acts of genocide.”

The Israeli military’s operations have caused more than 34,000 deaths in Gaza, most of them women and children. And it will get worse: Gaza is on the brink of famine, due in large part to the Israeli military’s blockading of humanitarian aid, despite the Biden administration’s repeated (and ineffective) demands to allow more aid.

Providing material support to Israel even as it carries out a war violating international orders makes us complicit, too.

U.S. weapons have played a key role in this devastation. The U.S. was already slated to send $3.8 billion to the Israeli military in 2024, which it’s given annually for years. The new $15 billion package multiplies that sum.

The Israeli military has used U.S. weapons systems, including F-16s and Apache helicopters, in recent operations in Gaza. Less than a month ago, even as the Biden administration claimed to oppose a planned Israeli military operation in the city of Rafah, the administration nevertheless approved a transfer of 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and other munitions that the Israeli military has been using to devastate Gaza for months.

All of this is a moral outrage—and also a legal one. And that’s why President Biden still has the power to stop this.

Following its January ruling, in March the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to allow the free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. But that still hasn’t happened. Providing material support to Israel even as it carries out a war violating international orders makes us complicit, too.

U.S. aid also may violate our own domestic laws: For example, the Leahy Laws prohibit providing weapons or military aid to forces that commit human rights violations. The U.S. is belatedly considering placing limits on one Israeli military battalion for its violations of human rights, but the misery in Gaza isn’t the fault of one “bad apple” battalion. It’s the express policy of a far-right government enabled by U.S. aid.

The Israeli government, of course, welcomed the new military aid and announced that the U.S. relationship with Israel is now “ironclad.” The truth is that while the Biden administration has made some largely rhetorical efforts to mitigate the disastrous humanitarian impact of Israel’s war, those attempts have largely rung hollow—and the Israeli government has shown that it doesn’t much care what the Biden administration thinks.

Sending a massive new aid package now will only compound that dynamic.

Still, there is widespread public support—and growing support in Congress—for conditioning or withholding aid. A recent CBS News poll found that 60% of Americans would prefer President Biden encourage Israel to decrease or stop military actions in Gaza. And a recent Pew poll found that among Americans aged 18-29, the largest segment strongly opposed sending more military aid to Israel.

That opposition by young Americans has become crystal clear as hundreds of student demonstrators against the war have been arrested at college campuses around the country—and yet they keep on protesting.

With most Americans telling pollsters they support a cease-fire in the war, the students’ demands are quite popular. And so are the domestic programs we could fund with money lawmakers want to send Israel.

After all, funds reclaimed from military aid could be reinvested in desperately needed domestic programs. One example is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which puts money in the hands of low-income workers—and which President Biden has proposed expanding by $15 billion in 2025. That would be a much better use of $15 billion than potentially breaking U.S. and international law to fund a deadly, unpopular war.

No matter how much money Congress sets aside for Israel, President Biden has the authority—and the responsibility—to enforce U.S. law to withhold that aid for as long as rampant human rights abuses are occurring.

It’s still the right thing to do—and likely to be a political winner.

Common Dreams Editor's Note: This is a transcript of remarks made by Professor Rashid Khalidi just outside the gates of Columbia University on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, just hours after NYPD officers raided Hamilton Hall to remove demonstrators who had occupied the building in protest of Israel's ongoing military assault on the people of Gaza.

My name is Rashid Khalidi. I am the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. I've been teaching here for a total of 22 years.

When I was a student back in the 60s, we were told we were "led by a bunch of outside agitators" by politicians nobody remembers the name of today. We were the conscience of this nation when we opposed the Vietnam War and racism back in 1968 and 1969 and 1970. The Vietnam War stopped because the people opposed it, and the people who led that were students, and the students who led that were here at Columbia and at Berkeley and a few other campuses on this fair Turtle Island.

This is not about Columbia or CCNY or Berkeley or UCLA or any other place where the students have risen up. This is the conscience of a nation speaking through your kids—through young people who are risking their futures, who are risking suspension, expulsion, and criminal arrest in order to wake people up in this country.

Students have been on the right side of history at Columbia and at other universities ever since the 1960s. We today honor the students who in 1968 opposed a genocidal, illegal, shameful war. Columbia University honors them. They're on the Columbia website; you can check it out yourself—1968 is commemorated. And one day what our students did here will be commemorated in the same way.

They are—and they were—on the right side of history, and that will go down in history, that when the change finally came and finally the American people who have already opposed this war—who've already opposed this genocide—are able to force their craven politicians to stop it, which we can do.

The United States is part of this war. Every plane bombing Gaza is an American plane: F-16s, F-15s, F-35s. Every Apache helicopter is American. Every bomb dropped is American. Those are our taxes. Those are our representatives. Shame on them and shame on the administration of this university. They will go down in infamy for having done what they did the other night.

Columbia Prof’s Fiery Speech—Students opposed Vietnam War in '68, fighting against Gaza genocide now www.youtube.com

Today, nobody remembers the names of the administrators and the trustees who ordered the police onto the Columbia campus in 1968. They have gone down in ignominy and so will these leaders, President [Minouche] Shafik and the Board of Trustees.

And the students will be remembered one day on a Columbia website as the people who helped change the course of this country, together with the brave students up at CCNY. We should shout out to them—together with the students at NYU, FIT, and all over this country.

What we are witnessing in terms of police repression is a tiny fraction of what people under occupation in Palestine have been experiencing for 56 years: the kettling, the checkpoints, the blockades, the police dragging students out (many of them were injured last night), the lies [about] outside agitators. Wait until the numbers come out from One Police Plaza. They were all students. They were our students. And we are ashamed of our university for instead of continuing the negotiations—that many faculty were happy to be part of—decided to bring in the NYPD.

This administration has brought disgrace on Columbia University. Shame on them. Shame on them.

This is not and was not about safety and comfort, which is what they claimed. Do we feel safer today now that 100 of our students have been processed down at One Police Plaza? Do we feel safer today that faculty and students cannot get onto their own campus? Of course not.

Public opinion is already with us. It's just the politicians, the media, and the trustees and administration of this university who are blind, death, and dumb to the demand of a moral imperative coming from our students.

This was a craven capitulation to external pressure. The students didn't want it. The faculty didn't want it. Outside forces wanted it: the politicians; the media—which has shamefully failed to report so much of what's actually happening here and which has exaggerated incidents instead of looking at the whole picture.

I don't want to talk more about the media. This is not about safety and comfort. This is about a genocide being carried out with American money and with American weapons against a people that has been living under occupation for generation after generation after generation. That's what it's really about. That's what the students were about and that's what Faculty and Staff for justice in Palestine are about.

What we are witnessing in terms of police repression is a tiny fraction of what people under occupation in Palestine have been experiencing for 56 years.

We are faculty and staff who believe that our students should be safe—all of our students should be safe. But the right to protest, the right to free speech, and academic freedom—which is being infringed as we speak. University protocols, the arrangements that this university made since 1968 to deal with these things, have been swept aside in an arbitrary fashion by this administration in response to external pressure. Shame on this administration.

I repeat one more time: This is not about Columbia or CCNY or Berkeley or UCLA or any other place where the students have risen up. This is the conscience of a nation speaking through your kids—through young people who are risking their futures, who are risking suspension, expulsion, and criminal arrest in order to wake people up in this country. It's absolutely essential.

Public opinion is already with us. It's just the politicians, the media, and the trustees and administration of this university who are blind, death, and dumb to the demand of a moral imperative coming from our students. Thank you very much.

In just the first week of this year, at least 18 journalists were assaulted or harassed while covering alleged election irregularities and violence in Bangladesh. Then, in early February, journalists in Pakistan were hindered from covering elections by a wave of violence, widespread internet blackouts, and mobile-network suspensions. In March, journalists in Turkey had been shot at and banned from observing local elections, despite their legal right to do so.

It was a worrying, but not especially surprising, start to this “super election year.” With half the world’s population casting ballots, independent reporting on the candidates and the issues is essential. Yet attacks on the media are rising, even in more mature democracies. In the United States, Donald Trump’s return as a candidate has brought back fresh memories of January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol, lunged at journalists and destroyed their cameras, and scribbled “Murder the media” on the doors.

Such examples are illustrative of a broader problem. From the U.S. to India, hard-won freedoms and rights are being eroded. In 2023, the V-Dem Institute, which monitors democracy around the world, published a report warning that the progress made toward democratization since 1989 is being reversed. The authors identify increased attacks on journalists as a leading indicator of autocratization: “Aspects of freedom of expression and the media are the ones ‘wannabe dictators’ attack the most and often first.”

Independent, professional journalism—both local and national—is even more important now that misinformation and disinformation are flooding into the public domain.

There is no doubt that threats to journalists are on the rise, and not just in countries where independent media is always a target. Over the past three years, the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented near-record numbers of journalists (and even top media executives) behind bars, including in supposed democracies such as Guatemala, and in places that once enjoyed relatively high levels of personal and political freedom, such as Hong Kong.

Journalist killings are at their highest levels in almost a decade. In 2022, the American investigative journalist Jeff German was stabbed outside his home in Las Vegas, and a politician whom German had reported on is now awaiting trial for the murder. From Washington and Westminster to Buenos Aires and Budapest, journalists who cover politics receive death threats daily and are increasingly vulnerable to being targeted at political rallies and protests.

According to a 2021 UNESCO report, three-quarters of women journalists surveyed had experienced online hate, harassment, or threats of violence. Among the most likely triggers for such abuse was reporting on “politics and elections.” Women and those from marginalized communities bear the brunt of this anti-media harassment online, and the vitriol frequently spills over into real-world violence.

The consequences of this disturbing trend are not limited to the media. Attacks on journalists harm us all. Journalists perform the public’s due diligence on candidates, probing their professional records, the veracity of their claims, and the credibility of their promises. By reporting on policy achievements and failures, they help corroborate—or contradict—a candidate’s official narrative, exposing lies and smear campaigns for what they are. They also provide practical information about voting processes, and monitor for electoral irregularities and campaign-finance violations. Without such information, there can be no democracy, but rather what V-Dem calls “electoral autocracy,” where elections are empty rituals.

Independent reporting is also crucial for holding accountable those already in power. It was old-fashioned, pound-the-pavement reporting that exposed New York Republican congressman George Santos’ falsified biography, ultimately leading to his ejection from Congress (not to mention criminal charges). It was the news media that aired recordings of Peru’s secret-police chief, Vladimiro Montesinos Torres, bribing judges and politicians—revelations that would lead to the downfall of President Alberto Fujimori. And it was independent reporting on “Partygate” that ultimately forced Boris Johnson out as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Independent, professional journalism—both local and national—is even more important now that misinformation and disinformation are flooding into the public domain. A recent report by The Associated Press finds that artificial intelligence is “supercharging” the spread of election lies through deepfake images and audio that is impossible to distinguish from authentic recordings. Similarly, a study released in March by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies found that disinformation had increased fourfold (compared to 2022) ahead of recent elections across the continent.

Independent news media are essential to counter this technology-driven trend. Consider Taiwan’s election earlier this year. Although lies flooded online channels throughout the campaign, studies suggest that much of the disinformation was defused by the combined efforts of local media, election authorities, and fact checkers, all of whom deliberately focused on building trust and furnishing voters with what they needed to make an informed, meaningful choice.

We now need to heed these lessons and watch carefully for warning signs. If this year is a litmus test for democracy around the world, a pre-indicator will be how the media are treated. We will have to remain vigilant in defending a free and independent press, and in championing a vibrant and curious local media. If we don’t, you can be certain that the erosion of freedoms will not stop with us.

He’s a funny little chap: a sharp dresser with a sleek grey jacket, a white waistcoat, red shorts, and a small grey crest for a hat. With his shiny black eyes and stubby black beak, he’s quite the looker. Like the chihuahua of the bird world, the tufted titmouse has no idea he’s tiny. He swaggers right up to the feeder, shouldering bigger birds out of the way.

A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have known a tufted titmouse from a downy woodpecker. (We have those, too, along with red-bellied woodpeckers, who really should have been named for their bright orange mohawks). This spring I decided to get to know my feathered neighbors with whom I’m sharing an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. So I turned up last Saturday for a Birding 101 class, where I learned, among other things, how to make binoculars work effectively while still wearing glasses.

Along with scholasticide, Gaza is living through an ecocide, a vastly sped-up version of the one our species seems hell-bent on spreading across the planet.

At Birding 101, I met around 15 birders (and proto-birders like me) whose ages skewed toward my (ancient!) end of the scale. Not all were old, however, or white; we were a motley bunch. Among us was a man my age with such acute and educated hearing that he (like many birders) identified species by call as we walked. I asked him if, when he hears a bird he knows, he also sees it in his mind.

“It’s funny you should ask,” he responded. “I once spent almost a year in a hospital, being treated for cancer. I lost every sense but my hearing and got used to listening instead of looking. So, yes, I see them when I hear them.”

Human-Bird Connections

I’m not expecting to convince everyone who reads this to grab a pair of binoculars and start scanning the treetops, but it’s worth thinking a bit about those tiny dinosaurs and their connections to us human beings. They have a surprising range of abilities, from using tools and solving complicated puzzles to exhibiting variations in regional cultures. My bird-listening friend was telling me about how the song sparrows in Maine begin their trills with the same four notes as the ones here in Cape Cod, but what follows is completely different, as if they’re speaking another dialect. Some birds cooperate with humans by hunting with us. Others, like Alex, the world-famous grey parrot, have learned to decode words in our language, recognize shapes and colors, and even count as high as six. (If you’d like to know more, take a look at The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman.)

We owe a lot to birds. Many of us eat them, or at least their eggs. In fact, the more I know about chickens, in particular, the harder it becomes to countenance the way they’re “farmed” in this country, whether for their meat or their eggs. Most chickens destined for dinner plates are raised by farmers contracted to big chicken brands like Tyson or super-stores like Walmart and Costco. They live surrounded by their own feces and, as The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof has written, over the last half-century, they’ve been bred to grow extremely fast and unnaturally large (more than four times as big as the average broiler in 1957):

The chickens grow enormous breasts, because that’s the meat consumers want, so the birds’ legs sometimes splay or collapse. Some topple onto their backs and then can’t get up. Others spend so much time on their bellies that they sometimes suffer angry, bloody rashes called ammonia burns; these are a poultry version of bed sores.

Those factory farms threaten not only chickens but many mammals, including humans, because they provide an incubation site for bird flus that can cross the species barrier.

Birding in Gaza

Many of us, myself included a few times a year, do eat birds, but an extraordinary number of people all over the world are also beguiled and delighted by them in their wild state. People deeper into bird culture than I am make a distinction between birdwatchers—anyone who pays a bit of attention to birds and can perhaps identify a few local species like the handsome rock dove, better known as a pigeon—and birders, people who devote time (and often money) to the practice, who may travel to see particular birds, and who most likely maintain a birding life list of every species they’ve spotted.

Mandy and Lara Sirdah of Gaza City are birders. Those twin sisters, now in their late forties, started photographing birds in their backyard almost a decade ago. They began posting their pictures on social media, eventually visiting marshlands and other sites of vibrant bird activity in the Gaza Strip. They’re not trained biologists, but their work documenting the birds of Gaza was crucial to the publication of that territory’s first bird checklist in 2023.

If it weren’t for the Israeli occupation—and now the full-scale war that has killed more than 34,000 people, 72% of them women and children, and damaged or destroyed 62% of all housing—Gaza would be ideal for birding. Like much of the Middle East, the territory lies under one of the world’s great flyways for millions of migrating birds. Its Mediterranean coast attracts shorebirds. Wadi Gaza, a river-fed ravine and floodplain that snakes its way across the middle of Gaza, is home to more than 100 bird species, as well as rare amphibians and other riparian creatures. In other words, that strip of land is a birder’s paradise.

Or it would be a paradise, except that, as the Daily Beast reported a year ago (long before the current war began):

Being a bird-watcher in Gaza means facing endless restrictions. Israel controls Gaza’s territorial waters, airspace, and the movement of people and goods, except at the border with Egypt. Most Palestinians who grew up in Gaza since the closure imposed in 2007, when Hamas seized control from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, have never left the 25-by-7-mile strip.

Gazan birders encounter other barriers, as well. Even if they can afford to buy binoculars or cameras with telephoto lenses, the Israeli government views such equipment as having “dual use” potential (that is, possibly serving military as well as civilian purposes) and so makes those items very difficult to acquire. It took the Sirdahs, for example, five months of wrangling and various permission documents simply to get their birding equipment into Gaza.

Getting equipment in was hard enough, but getting out of Gaza, for any reason, has become nearly impossible for its Palestinian residents. Along with most of its 2.3 million inhabitants, the sisters simply couldn’t leave the territory, even before the present nightmare, to attend birding conferences, visit exhibitions of their photography, or receive awards for their work. They were imprisoned on a strip of land that’s about the size of the island in Massachusetts where I’ve been watching birds lately. When I try to imagine life in Gaza today, I sometimes think about what it would be like to shove a couple of million people into this tiny place, chase them with bombs and missiles from one end of it to the other, and then start all over again, as Israel seems to be about to do in the southern Gazan city of Rafah with its million-plus refugees.

Wiping Out Knowledge, and Knowledge Workers

The Sirdahs collaborated on their bird checklist project with Abdel Fattah Rabou, a much-honored professor of environmental studies at the Islamic University of Gaza. Rabou himself has devoted many years to the study and conservation of birds and other wildlife in Gaza. The Islamic University of Gaza was one of the first institutional targets of the current war. It was bombed by the Israeli Defense Forces on October 11, 2023. Since then, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the project of wiping out Gaza’s extensive repositories of knowledge and sites of learning has essentially been completed:

The destruction of Gaza’s universities began with the bombing of the Islamic University in the first week of the war and continued with airstrikes on Al-Azhar University on November 4. Since then, all of Gaza’s academic institutions have been destroyed, as well as many schools, libraries, archives, and other educational institutions.

Indeed, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights has observed that “with more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide.’” U.N. experts report:

After six months of military assault, more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers, and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured—with numbers growing each day. At least 60% of educational facilities, including 13 public libraries, have been damaged or destroyed and at least 625,000 students have no access to education. Another 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques, and three churches have also been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years of history. Israa University, the last remaining university in Gaza, was demolished by the Israeli military on 17 January 2024.

I wanted to know whether Professor Rabou was among those 95 university faculty killed so far in the Gaza war, so I did what those of us with Internet access do these days: I googled him and found his Facebook page. He is, it turns out, still living and still posting, most recently about the desperate conditions—illness, pollution, sewage rash—experienced by refugees in temporary shelter centers near him. A few days earlier, he’d uploaded a more personal photograph: a plastic bag of white stuff, inscribed with blue Arabic lettering. “The first drop of rain,” he wrote, “Alhamdulillah [thank God], the first bag of flour enters my house in months as a help.”

The Sirdah twins, too, still remain alive, and they continue to post on their Instagram account.

Along with scholasticide, Gaza is living through an ecocide, a vastly sped-up version of the one our species seems hell-bent on spreading across the planet. As The Guardian reports, Gaza has lost almost half its tree cover and farmland, with much of the latter “reduced to packed earth.” And the news only gets worse: “[S]oil and groundwater have been contaminated by munitions and toxins; the sea is choked with sewage and waste; the air polluted by smoke and particulate matter.” Gaza has become, and could remain for years to come, essentially unlivable. And yet millions of people must try to live there. At what point, one wonders, do the “-cides”—scholastic-, eco-, and the rest—add up to genocide?

Birds of Gaza

Gaza’s wild birds aren’t the only birds in Gaza. Caged songbirds can evidently still be bought in markets, and some of Rafah’s desperate inhabitants seek them out, hoping their music will mask the sounds of war. Voice of America recounts the story of a woman evacuee from northern Gaza who, halfway through her journey south, realized that she’d left her birds behind. She returned to rescue her caged avian friends, displaying a deep and tender affection for her winged companions. However, Professor Rabou is less sanguine about the practice. “As a people under occupation,” he says, “we shouldn’t put birds in cages.”

“Birds of Gaza” also happens to be the name of an international art project created to remember the individual children killed in the war. The premise is simple: Children around the world choose a specific child who has died and draw, paint, or fabricate a bird in his or her honor. Participants can choose from, God help us, a database of over 6,500 children who have died in Gaza since last October, then upload photos of their creations to the Birds of Gaza website. From Great Britain to South Africa to Japan, children have been doing just that.

Did you know that Gaza—well, Palestine—even has a national bird? The Palestine sunbird is a gorgeous creature, crowned in iridescent green and blue, and sporting a curved beak perfect for extracting nectar from plants. The West Bank Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar designed a postage stamp celebrating the sunbird. “This bird is a symbol of freedom and movement,” he says. “It can fly anywhere.”

Birding for a Better World

Back in the United States, the Feminist Bird Club (with chapters across North America and Europe) is committed to making birding accessible to everyone, especially people who may not have had safe access to the outdoors in the past. “There is no reason why we can’t celebrate birds and support our most cherished beliefs in equity and justice at the same time,” they say. “For us, it’s not either/or.” Last year they published Birding for a Better World, a book about how people can genuinely connect with beings—avian and human—whose lives are very different from theirs. They sponsor a monthly virtual Birders for Palestine action hour, in which participants can learn what they can do to support the people of Palestine, including their birders.

As I watch a scrum of brilliant yellow goldfinches scrabbling for a perch on the bird feeder in my yard, knowing that, on this beautiful little island, I’m about as safe as a person can be, I think about the horrors going on half a world away, paid for, at least in part, with my taxes. Indeed, Congress just approved billions more dollars in direct military aid for Israel, even as the State Department released its 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. As The Jerusalem Post reports, in the section on Israel, the report documents “more than a dozen types of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, conflict-related sexual violence or punishment, and the punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative.”

Somehow, it’s cheering to imagine that, in spite of everything, there are still a few people birding in a devastated Gaza.

Even before the wholesale destruction of Gaza, the message from the major media was that Democrats as a group are suffering from a potentially fatal case of Bidenitis. Most Democrats, the narrative goes, will end up voting for Joe Biden’s reelection to keep Trump out of the White House, but they won’t like it. These unhappy Democrats feel trapped, forced to vote for a candidate for whom they have no enthusiasm. And there are many such Democrats. It’s easy, however, to overlook the fact there are also many Democrats for whom Joe Biden is much more than the lesser of two evils. People like me who, if not exactly enthusiastic supporters, have nevertheless been staunch supporters.

We believe he’s earned our support. We don’t care that he’s old, that he sometimes picks the wrong word when speaking, or that he’s not a particularly dynamic speaker. What we have cared about is his success in pushing forward long-promised (mostly) progressive policy goals. Things like investing billions of dollars in the fight against global warming, finally doing something about our deteriorating infrastructure, and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Progressives have been talking about these things for decades. But it was Joe Biden who, despite having only a tiny Democratic majority in Congress, made them more than talking points.

None of these advances were perfect from a progressive viewpoint, but advances they unquestionably were. Joe Biden’s legislative record easily outshines any other president since Lyndon Johnson.

While the overwhelming majority of progressives who are angered over Gaza will ultimately vote for Biden in order to prevent the horror of a second Trump term, inevitably some won’t.

Then on October 7, 2023, the world shook. Hamas launched its brutal incursion into Israel quickly followed by Israeli’s brutal attacks on Gaza. Suddenly, many staunch Biden supporters found themselves painfully confronted with a very different Joe Biden from the one they thought they knew — a president whose loyalty to Israel, or more likely his loyalty to a mirage of an Israel that may once have existed but is now long gone, led him to not only overlook what can only be described as crimes against humanity by Israel, but to also make the United States a participant in those crimes. And, yes, Hamas has committed crimes against humanity of its own, horrible ones, but that one war crime doesn’t justify another is a truism that shouldn’t need to be spoken. Also, we are sending arms to Israel, not to Hamas.

That the United States shares responsibility for the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza is beyond debate. As far as we know, no American soldier has personally pulled the trigger of a gun in Gaza, dropped a bomb there, or stopped delivery of food to its starving civilian population. But America has watched as Israel, in what was supposed to be a war against Hamas alone, not all of Gaza, has done all of these things while slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children. Israel has also made it clear that even if starving the entire population of Gaza isn’t their goal, it also isn’t something that bothers them terribly. Indeed, according to polls, a solid majority of Israelis oppose allowing food and medical aid into Gaza, widespread famine be damned.

And for far too long not only did our president fail to take concrete action in opposition to this slaughter. He failed to even speak out against it. Suddenly, Joe Biden’s famous empathy started to seem awfully selective.

In fairness, President Biden did eventually get around to criticizing Israel’s actions. He strongly urged the Israelis to take steps to protect civilians. There even appears to be some evidence that pressure from Biden helped to reduce Israel’s cruelty to the population of Gaza in some small ways. Yet when Benjamin Netanyahu’s response was in most respects to tell President Biden to buzz off, Biden continued to send Israel guns and bombs which they could use in committing the same wrongful actions, thereby making all Americans complicit in these actions. And every day children continue to die as a result of Israeli attacks.

Are long-term Biden supporters likely to withhold their votes from him to protest Gaza? Of course not. Keeping Donald Trump out of the White House in the 2024 election is the one overriding priority of this election. As so many others have pointed out, the survival of our democracy depends on this. And even if that weren’t true, is there any doubt Joe Biden will be a far better president than Donald Trump? For that matter, does anyone seriously believe the people of Gaza would do better in a Trump presidency?

But while most Democrats will still support Joe Biden in the upcoming election, for many of us a sense of betrayal will live on. And this includes what could easily become an unintended betrayal of American democracy itself.

The terrifying thing is this is almost certainly destined to be another close election, with every vote, at least in battleground states, potentially decisive. While the overwhelming majority of progressives who are angered over Gaza will ultimately vote for Biden, inevitably some won’t. And those few votes (or non-votes) could easily put Donald Trump back in the White House, with all that would mean.

And if that occurs, it will mean that Joe Biden chose to bet the future of American democracy on catering to the whims of Benjamin Netanyahu, a brutal, right-wing, authoritarian thug, and then lost that bet.

If that does happen, he will be remembered for nothing else.

Today is World Press Freedom Day, a day that recognizes the journalists worldwide who expose wrongdoing, challenge power and seek the truth. Since mid-April, student-run news outlets have been carrying the banner of press freedom as they cover the often brutal police crackdowns against pro-Palestinian encampments set up to protest what students consider to be genocide happening in Gaza.

If coverage of the crackdowns results in any Pulitzers, the awards should go to cub reporters like those at Columbia University’s student-run radio station WKCR, and not to those members of the corporate press who’ve relied more on their virtual Rolodexes of official sources than on the sort of shoe-leather reporting that gets closer to revealing what’s actually happening on college campuses.

Beginning with Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, school administrators have called in police to conduct sweeps at dozens of protest encampments nationwide. Many of these university officials have aligned themselves with the law-enforcement claim that “outside agitators” who are not members of the student population are leading the campus protests.

On World Press Freedom Day, it’s worth asking what makes a free press free.

This false characterization is designed to cast students as mere pawns in some larger scheme, and not as engaged members of a well-organized, student-run movement that seeks to compel their schools to divest any financial support from a state that’s perpetrating atrocities in Gaza that have killed tens of thousands of civilians.

Grooming the press

Unfortunately, many in the media establishment have also aligned their reporting and commentary with the views of administrators and law enforcement.

Prior to police involvement, most of the student protests were peaceful — though there were reported instances of antisemitism that must be universally condemned. The violence at Columbia only started once Shafik ignored Columbia students and faculty and opened campus gates to a heavily militarized police force.

Shafik’s disastrous decision sparked a wider backlash. Student protesters built new encampments — or expanded existing ones — on campuses across the country. This in turn drew front-page media attention to the movement. Through the distorted lens of many mainstream outlets, though, it’s the students who are on the attack.

On April 22, The Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed in which political commentator Steven Stalinsky claims that Hamas is coordinating and “grooming” student activists for acts of terrorism.

ABC News and Fox Television’s New York City affiliate portrayed the mass arrests the week of April 29 as a “clash” between protesters and police when most available footage clearly shows law enforcement as the aggressors.

One New York Times piece framed the spread of student encampments as a “contagious” disease. “The piece focused largely on why demonstrations have been so prevalent in America but not overseas, yet failed to mention the fact that the U.S. is Israel’s most powerful and generous supporter,” writes The New Republic’s Alex Shephard. “That would seem highly relevant.” Reporters could help their readers better understand the protests by covering the complicated money trail that links the investments of heavily endowed universities like Columbia and UCLA to a military-industrial complex that arms repressive regimes worldwide.

In an overly commercialized media system, the press is not as free as it claims to be.

The Washington Post’s Laura Wagner wrote a piece about student protesters giving the professional press a “cold shoulder.” Wagner mentioned that students “felt that their protests are not being covered fairly,” but did not follow up with examples of unfair coverage or offer much further analysis.

While professional journalists can be dogged in their reporting on other commercial sectors, they tend to shy away from criticism of their own.

Meanwhile, student reporters with Columbia’s WKCR spent hours on April 30 and into the early hours of May 1 wading into the protests to livestream the escalation of the NYPD presence on campus. The brutal reality of the crackdown that followed unfolded before their cameras. “[W]e’re all very dedicated to our coverage,” WKCR’s Sarah Barlyn told Mother Jones. "It’s hard to sleep when we know that we have a job to report on what’s going on.”

Eventually, police ordered WKCR reporters to get off campus. “Frankly, no one is left to document what’s happening,” one reporter responded on air.

Indeed. Many journalists working for professional media outlets were instead attending press conferences convened by NYPD officials and Mayor Eric Adams. The media were told that the protests had been “co-opted by professional outside agitators” who are not Columbia students. Their subsequent reporting followed this talking point. Many portrayed one 63-year-old civil-disobedience trainer as a puppet master, downplaying students as the legitimate organizers of protest encampments.

The un-free press

It may seem off to criticize the press on World Press Freedom Day. Today, we should be celebrating the essential role a free press plays in giving the public the information it needs to exercise democratic power. Ideally, to paraphrase Chicago Evening Post journalist Finley Peter Dunne, this freedom allows the press “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

But in an overly commercialized media system, the press is not as free as it claims to be.

The escalating authoritarianism we’re witnessing in the crackdown on college campuses is, in part, a byproduct of a media system that fails to hold powerful interests accountable for the lies they tell. U.S. media firms of most every type need to make money via advertising. When commercial outcomes dictate your success, catering to wealth and power matters more than keeping that same power in check. As a result, commercial media view the world through a corporate scrim, and shy away from any reporting that “afflicts the comfortable” too much, and that potentially undercuts their bottom lines.

To foster a public-interest media system that promotes democracy and gives voice to dissenting views, we must create public structures to support the production of noncommercial news and information.

Systemic failures in commercial media coverage of protests have helped normalize ideas about police violence against dissenting voices. Our media system is supposed to act as a counterweight to and not an enabler of such suppression.

A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania found that countries with the most financial support for noncommercial media per capita had the highest levels of public knowledge about and engagement in democracy. According to the study, noncommercial media also feature more diverse news coverage, potentially diminishing commercial media’s ability to dictate public discourse on a given issue.

To foster a public-interest media system that promotes democracy and gives voice to dissenting views, we must create public structures to support the production of noncommercial news and information. We must let a thousand WKCRs — and other noncommercial outlets — bloom, including those that actually pay reporters a living wage.

While this approach doesn’t pretend to answer all of the questions about the media’s role in service of democracy, it recognizes that a strong independent noncommercial media system can serve as a major bulwark against democracy-destabilizing forces.

On World Press Freedom Day, it’s worth asking what makes a free press free. We have the young reporters at WKCR to thank for helping show us the answer.

Wednesday’s Senate Budget Committee hearings were wrapping up as I wrote this; they marked one more important step in the decades-long effort to hold Big Oil accountable for the fact that it is wrecking the one planet we’ve got.

The ostensible purpose of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) hearing, and one it effectively accomplished, was to get on the record a boatload of documents showing that the oil companies and their trade groups continue to lie about climate change. Many of the documents were obtained by the House Oversight Committee in the last Congress, back when it was controlled by Democrats—that’s why the first witness was Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), there to describe the trove of new papers and tapes demonstrating the industry’s ongoing fecklessness.

But the hearing also sent a deeper signal—which is that the power balance, at least as long as Democrats remain in power, is slowly shifting against what was long the country’s most powerful industry.

All the skirmishing that really matters is about gas—it’s the one thing the industry relies on to blunt the rise of its mortal foe, actual clean energy in the form of wind, solar, and batteries.

Raskin, for instance, told the tragicomical story of ExxonMobil’s efforts to promote itself as an algae company—including literally spending half as much money on ads as on research before scrapping the whole program as impossible. (You can read my account of this fiasco here).

But then Raskin went much further, explaining the far more serious deception around natural gas that’s at the heart of Big Oil’s current efforts to prolong the energy transition.

Natural gas, he said, “isn’t green and it isn’t clean.” Indeed, explained Whitehouse, the industry’s master plan is to “disguise natural gas as renewable, to lock their fossil fuels into our energy future.”

This is an incredibly important point for senior Democrats to be making, because natural gas has always been the Democratic vice. Coal was obviously filthy, but natural gas, when you burn it, produces half as much carbon. Therefore it became the Democratic pathway to reducing emissions while not really offending the fossil fuel industry. Go back and look at former President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses—nearly every one contains a paean to the rise of fracked gas.

Sadly, of course, scientists soon found that natural gas production leaked large quantities of methane, which both Raskin and Whitehouse took pains to point traps 80 times more heat than CO2. Now that we know that, it becomes clear that the efforts to replace coal with gas barely reduced America’s total greenhouse gas emissions at all.

The fossil fuel industry desperately wants to lock in more dependence on fracked gas while they still can—that’s why they reacted with such white-hot anger to the Biden administration’s pause on permits for new liquefied natural gas export facilities earlier this year. But the hope raised by today’s hearing is that—if President Joe Biden wins re-election—that pause may become permanent, and the expansion of natural gas will finally be halted, recognized for the deep peril that it is. All the skirmishing that really matters is about gas—it’s the one thing the industry relies on to blunt the rise of its mortal foe, actual clean energy in the form of wind, solar, and batteries. And since California this spring is decisively showing that a modern economy can support itself on that trinity, the battle is growing ever more desperate for Big Oil. So far the Biden administration has been far more focused on aiding clean energy than hindering the dirty stuff (and yet more good news on that front this week). But we’re getting to the point where it may be politically possible to actually take on the bad guys.

Indeed, the hearing also gave some hints to a couple of possible end games.

When he had his turn to “ask questions,” Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen used his senatorial privilege to deliver a little tutorial on the Polluter Pays climate superfund bill that I’ve been writing about recently. “If you broke it, you pay for it,” he said—and then cited the essentially impossible cost of protecting Maryland, with its 7,000 miles of inlets and bays, from sea-level rise. “It’s the tragedy of the commons,” Raskin said. “Big oil profits from using the sky, they’re the ones who’ve profited from it, but they’re not asked to pay the costs of climate destabilization.” A carbon tax would have been a straightforward way to make them pay those costs, but Big Oil has made sure it could never get through Congress—so this effort, at the state level, might do the trick, exerting enough pressure to make them reach a deal.

Or maybe it will come through a slightly different route. The panel of experts that followed Raskin had the indefatigable Geoff Supran, now a professor at the University of Miami, to follow up on the climate deception angle. But it also had Sharon Eubanks, who led much of the tobacco litigation for the Department of Justice, forcing the settlement that has driven cigarette smoking to the margins of our society. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked her the key question: Should the Department of Justice consider using the RICO statutes to hold Big Oil accountable? Yes it should, she said.

Again, this is a signal of what a second-term Biden administration might be willing and able to accomplish. The Democrats are unlikely to hold the Senate—this kind of hearing might be on the House side next year, with Whitehouse heading over to be a witness—but if the White House itself remains in Biden’s hands then, freed of reelection pressures, he may be ready to move.

Especially since the Republicans have… not much. Louisiana’s John Kennedy, increasingly the Senate point man for the hydrocarbon industry, tried to embarrass Raskin with a bunch of questions about boreal forest fires—wouldn’t their carbon emissions somehow overwhelm any efforts to cut back on fossil fuels? Happily Whitehouse had the data on hand to show that against coal, oil, and gas burning forests remain a small source of emissions, and Oregon’s Jeff Merkley pointed out the real issue: The reason boreal forests are on fire is precisely because we keep heating up the planet. Wisconsin’s low-wattage Ron Johnson wanted to talk about some climate declaration signed by “scientists” that says global warming isn’t a threat; “Yeah, whatev” was essentially Raskin’s reply. The defense of fossil fuels at this point is intellectually impossible, and the ever-hotter temperatures will provide a political opening.

But that only matters if there’s someone there to seize the opening. If the Republicans win the fall elections, the fossil fuel strategy will have prevailed.

The mass protests at dozens of U.S. universities cannot be reduced to a stifling and misleading conversation about antisemitism.

Thousands of American students across the country are not protesting, risking their own futures and very safety, because of some pathological hate for the Jewish people. They are doing so in a complete rejection of, and justifiable outrage over, the mass killing carried out by the state of Israel against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza.

They are angry because the bloodbath in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7, is fully funded and backed by the U.S. government.

Young Americans, who are not beholden to the self-interests or historical and spiritual illusions of previous generations, are declaring that “enough is enough.”

These mass protests began at Columbia University on April 17 before covering all of U.S. geography, from New York to Texas and from North Carolina to California.

The protests are being compared, in terms of their nature and intensity, to the anti-war protests in the U.S. against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s.

While the comparison is apt, it is critical to note the ethnic diversity and social inclusiveness in the current protests. On many campuses, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Black, Native American, and white students are standing shoulder to shoulder with their Palestinian peers in a unified stance against the war.

None of them is motivated by fear that they could be drafted to fight in Gaza, as was, indeed, the case for many American students during the Vietnam War era. Instead, they are united around a clear set of priorities: ending the war, ending U.S. support of Israel, ending their universities’ direct investment in Israel, and the recognition of their right to protest. This is not idealism, but humanity at its finest moments.

Despite mass arrests, starting at Columbia, and the direct violence against peaceful protesters everywhere, the movement has only grown stronger.

On the other side, U.S. politicians, starting with President Joe Biden, accused the protesters of antisemitism, without engaging with any of their reasonable, and globally-supported, demands.

Once again, the Democratic and Republican establishments stood together in blind support for Israel.

Biden condemned the “antisemitic protests,” describing them as “reprehensible and dangerous.”

A few days later, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-La.), visited the university under tight security, using language that is hardly suitable for a country which claims to embrace democracy and respect freedom of expression and right of assembly.

“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and antisemitism to flourish on our campuses,” he said, adding: “I am here today joining my colleagues, and calling on President (Minouche) Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.”

Shafik, however, was already on board, as she was the one who had called for the New York Police Department to crack down on the protesters, falsely accusing them of antisemitism.

U.S. mainstream media has helped contribute to the confusion and misinformation regarding the reasons behind the protests.

The Wall Street Journal, once more, allowed writers such as Steven Stalinsky to smear young justice activists for daring to criticize Israel’s horrendous genocide in Gaza.

“Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West,” he alleged, thus, once more taking a critical conversation about U.S. support of genocide into bizarre and unsubstantiated directions.

U.S. establishment writers may wish to continue to fool themselves and their readers, but the truth is that neither Hezbollah nor Hamas “recruiters” are active in Ivy League U.S. universities, where young people are often groomed to become leaders in government and large corporations.

All such distractions are meant to avoid the undeniable shift in American society, one that promises a long-term paradigm shift in popular views of Israel and Palestine.

For years prior to the current war, Americans have been changing their opinions on Israel, and their country’s so-called “special relationship” with Tel Aviv.

Young Democrats have led the trend, which can also be observed among independents and, to some extent, young Republicans.

A statement that asserts that “sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis” would have been unthinkable in the past. But it is the new normal, and latest opinion polls regarding the subject, along with Biden’s dwindling approval ratings, continue to attest to this fact.

The older generations of American politicians, who have built and sustained careers based on their unconditional support for Israel, are overwhelmed by the new reality. Their language is confused and riddled with falsehoods. Yet, they are willing to go as far as defaming a whole generation of their own people—the future leaders of America—to satisfy the demands of the Israeli government.

In a televised statement on April 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the protesters as “antisemitic mobs” who “have taken over leading universities,” alleging that the peaceful protesters are calling “for the annihilation of Israel.” His words should have outraged all Americans, regardless of their politics and ideology. Instead, more U.S. politicians began parroting Netanyahu’s words.

But political opportunism shall generate a blowback effect, not just in the distant future, but in the coming weeks and months, especially in the run-up to the presidential elections.

Millions of Americans are clearly fed up, with war, with their government’s allegiance to a foreign country, to militarism, to police violence, to the unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech in the U.S., and more.

Young Americans, who are not beholden to the self-interests or historical and spiritual illusions of previous generations, are declaring that “enough is enough.” They are doing more than chanting, and rising in unison, demanding answers, moral and legal accountability, and an immediate end to the war.

Now that the U.S. government has taken no action, in fact continues to feed the Israeli war machine in its onslaught against millions of Palestinians, these brave students are acting themselves. This is certainly an awe-inspiring, watershed moment in the history of the United States.

Helicopters have been throbbing overhead for days now. Nights, too. Police are swarming the streets of Broadway, many in riot gear. Police vans, some as big as a city bus, are lined up along side streets and Broadway.

Outside the gates of the Columbia University campus, a penned-in group of pro-Israel demonstrators has faced off against a penned-in group of anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian protesters. These groups are usually small, often vastly outnumbered by the police around them, but they are loud and they are not Columbia students. They’ve been coming every day this April to shout, chant, and hold up signs, some of which are filled with hateful speech directed at the other side, equating protests against the slaughter in Gaza with being pro-Hamas, and calls to bring home the hostages with being pro-genocide.

For those who don’t know the Columbia campus, the encampment is blocking nobody’s way and presents a danger to no one.

Inside the locked gates of the campus, the atmosphere is entirely different. Even as the now-notorious student tent encampment there stretches through its second week, all is calm. Inside the camp, students sleep, eat, and sit on bedspreads studying together and making signs saying, “Nerds for Palestine,” “Passover is for Liberation,” and “Stop the Genocide.” The Jewish students there held a seder on Passover. The protesters even asked faculty to come into the encampment and teach because they miss their classes. Indeed, it’s so quiet on campus that you can hear birds singing in the background. The camp, if anything, is hushed.

The Real Story on Campus

Those protesters who have been so demonized, for whom the riot police are waiting outside—the same kinds of students Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, invited the police to arrest, zip-tie, and cart away on April 18—are mostly undergraduate women, along with a smaller number of undergraduate men, 18 to 20 years old, standing up for what they have a right to stand up for: their beliefs. Furthermore, for those who don’t know the Columbia campus, the encampment is blocking nobody’s way and presents a danger to no one. It is on a patch of lawn inside a little fence buffered by hedges. As I write, those students are not preventing anyone from walking anywhere, nor occupying any buildings, perpetrating any violence, or even making much noise. (In the early hours of April 30, however, student protesters did occupy Hamilton Hall in reaction to a sweep of suspensions the day before.)

As a tenured professor at Columbia’s Journalism School, I’ve been watching the student protests ever since the brutal Hamas attack of October 7, and I’ve been struck by the decorum of the protesting students, as angry and upset as they are on both sides. This has particularly impressed me knowing that several students are directly affected by the ongoing war. I have a Jewish student who has lost family and friends to the attack by Hamas, and a Palestinian student who learned of the deaths of her family and friends in Gaza while she was sitting in my class.

Not only is the slaughter in Gaza getting lost in the growing fog of hysterical speech about antisemitism on American college campuses, but so is the fact that Arab and Muslim students are being targeted, too.

Given how horrific this war is, it’s not surprising that there have been a few protesters who lose control and shout hideous things, but for the most part, such people have been quietly walked away by other students or campus security guards. All along, the main messages from the students have been “Bring back our hostages” on the Israeli side and “Stop slaughtering Gazan civilians” on the antiwar and pro-Palestinian-rights side. Curiously enough, those messages are not so far apart, for almost everyone wants the hostages safe and almost everyone is calling for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a different direction and protect the innocent.

Unfortunately, instead of allowing students to have their say and disciplining those who overstep boundaries, Columbia President Shafik and her administration suspended two of the most vocal groups protesting Israel’s war on Gaza: the student chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. This only enraged and galvanized students and some faculty more.

The Right Seizes and Distorts the Narrative

Then the right got involved, using accusations of widespread antisemitism to take eyes off the astronomical death toll in Gaza—more than 34,000 reportedly dead as I write this, more than 14,500 of them children—while fretting about the safety of Jewish students instead.

The faculty of Columbia takes antisemitism seriously, and we have methods in place to deal with it. We also recognize that some of the chants of the protesters do make certain Jewish students and faculty uncomfortable. But as a group of Jewish faculty pointed out in an op-ed for the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, it’s absurd to claim that antisemitism, which is defined by the Jerusalem Declaration as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility, or violence against Jews as Jews,” is rampant on our campus. “To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term,” we wrote. “Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness.”

The real threat to American Jews comes not from students but from the very white nationalist MAGA Republicans who are shouting about antisemitism the loudest.

Sadly, that’s exactly what the right has succeeded in doing. Not only is the slaughter in Gaza getting lost in the growing fog of hysterical speech about antisemitism on American college campuses, but so is the fact that Arab and Muslim students are being targeted, too. Some students even reported they were sprayed with a mace-like material, possibly manufactured by the Israeli military, and that, as a result, several protesters had to go to the hospital. My own students told me they have been targeted with hate mail and threats over social media. I even saw a doxxing truck sponsored by the far-right group Accuracy in Media driving around the Columbia neighborhood bearing photographs of Muslim students, naming them and calling them terrorists. Again, it’s important to note that most of the harassers have been outsiders, not students.

No, the real threat to American Jews comes not from students but from the very white nationalist MAGA Republicans who are shouting about antisemitism the loudest.

Then came the Republican hearings.

The Congressional Hearings

Having watched the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania stumble and fall in the face of MAGA Representative Elise Stefanik’s bullying accusations of antisemitism in December, Columbia President Shafik did all she could to avoid a similar fate when it was her turn. But when she submitted to four hours of McCarthyite-style questioning in Congress on April 17—one Republican even asked if there were Republicans among the faculty—Shafik cringed, evaded, and caved.

“I agree with you” was her most frequent phrase. She never pushed back against the characterization of the Columbia campus by Republican Representatives Virginia Foxx and Stefanik as riddled with antisemitism. She never stood up for the integrity of our faculty and students or for the fact that we’re a campus full of remarkable scholars and artists perfectly capable of governing ourselves. She never even pointed out that who we suspend, fire, or hire is none of Congress’ business. Instead, she broke all our university rules by agreeing to investigate and fire members of our own faculty and to call in the police when she deemed it necessary.

The very day after the hearings, that’s exactly what she did.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Gaza was never even mentioned.

A Pandora’s Box

Shafik’s craven performance in front of Republican lawmakers opened a Pandora’s box of troubles. The student protesters swelled in numbers and erected their encampment. Faculty members wrote outraged opinion pieces condemning Shafik’s behavior. And when she called in the police to arrest students, more students than ever joined the protests all over the country.

Then, on April 24, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson visited Columbia with Republicans Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, and Anthony D’Esposito (and even Foxx from North Carolina), acting as if some kind of terrible riot had gone on here. Standing at the top of the steps in front of the grand facade of Low Library, a century-old building meant to symbolize learning and reason, and surrounded by heckling students, Johnson declared that some Jewish students had told him of “heinous acts of bigotry,” characterized the protesters as “endorsed by Hamas,” and called for Shafik to resign “if she cannot immediately bring order to the chaos.”

“What chaos?” said an undergraduate standing next to me on the steps as we listened.

“He’s saying a bunch of 20-year-old American college students are in cahoots with Hamas?” another asked incredulously.

Sadly, despite the reality on the ground at Columbia, the right’s wild narrative of virulent antisemitism here has been swallowed whole, not just by Republicans but by a long list of Democrats, too.

Johnson then escalated the threats, claiming the National Guard might be called in and that Congress might even revoke federal funding if universities couldn’t keep such protests under control.

I looked behind me at the encampment on the other side of campus. In front of the tents on the grass, the students had erected a sign listing what they called “Gaza Encampment Community Guidelines.” These included: “No desecration of the land. No drug/alcohol consumption. Respect personal boundaries.” And most significantly, “We commit to assuming the best intentions, granting ourselves and others grace when mistakes are made, and approaching conflict with the goal of addressing and repairing.” Designated faculty and students stood at the entrance to make sure no outsiders got in, and that nobody entered the encampment unless they had read and agreed to that list of commitments. The noisiest people on campus were the thronging media. But nobody and nothing was out of control.

The Weaponization of Antisemitism

Sadly, despite the reality on the ground at Columbia, the right’s wild narrative of virulent antisemitism here has been swallowed whole, not just by Republicans but by a long list of Democrats, too, including President Joe Biden and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, not to speak of New York Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, Jerry Nadler, Dan Goldman, and Adriano Espaillat. They have all publicly condemned the supposedly rampant antisemitism on campus without, it seems, bothering to check their facts.

Meanwhile, MAGA Christian Nationalist Sean Feucht posted on X that “Columbia has been taken over by radical Pro-Hamas protesters.”

Back in the real world, the right’s hysteria over such supposed antisemitism hasn’t really been about protecting Jews at all, as many faculty members (including us Jewish ones) have written and spoken about. Rather, the right is weaponizing antisemitism as a way of furthering its campaign to suppress the kind of freedom of thought and speech on campus that threatens its authoritarian goals of turning this country Christian, conservative, straight, and white—not to mention their urge to suppress support of Palestinian autonomy.

When Students Don’t Feel Safe

My students tell me they feel perfectly safe on campus. They may not like some of the chants they sometimes hear. I myself have caught a few that chilled me as a Jew. I’ve also heard chants that sicken me on behalf of my Muslim friends. But those have been rare. And campus is a place where everyone should be free to debate, disagree, express their opinions, listen, and learn. We have to remember that free speech does not mean speech we agree with.

No, where my students do not feel safe is out on Broadway, where extremists on both sides gather. They don’t feel safe when the false narratives of Republican politicians draw far-right angry mobs to the campus gates, something that is happening just as I’m writing this piece. Most of all, they don’t feel safe when police arrive on campus with guns in their holsters and zip-ties hanging from their belts.

I stood and watched that day the police came. Four huge drones hovered overhead, along with those eternally buzzing helicopters. Dozens of police buses were lined up on West 114th Street on the south side of campus as if prepared to deal with some massive, violent riot. Then, in came the police, some in riot gear, to tie the hands of more than 100 students behind their backs and march them onto police buses.

Not only is the protest against Israel’s pathological spree of murder in Palestine and on the West Bank being drowned out in this debate, so are the student protesters’ demands.

Not a single student resisted. Even the police were quoted as saying they presented no danger to anyone. As NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said, “To put this in perspective, the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”

Not long later, those arrested students were suspended and the ones who attend Barnard were locked out of their dorms. Faculty and friends had to offer their couches and spare beds to save those young women from being homeless on the streets of New York. One of them is in my building staying with a colleague downstairs. “Nobody told our parents that we were being evicted,” she told me in my lobby.

Faculty Response

Many faculty were so shocked by these events that on Monday, April 22, some 300 of us gathered on the steps of Low Library, holding up signs that said, “Hands Off Our Students” and “End Student Suspensions Now.” Several professors gave impassioned speeches praising those students for their courage, demanding that academic freedom be protected, and castigating Shafik for throwing us all under the bus.

Still, Gaza was not mentioned. It seemed as if the genocide occurring there was disappearing in the fog.

“I’m worried that the message of our protest is getting lost,” that suspended student told me as we spoke in the lobby. “Everyone’s talking about academic freedom and police repression instead.”

Indeed, not only is the protest against Israel’s pathological spree of murder in Palestine and on the West Bank being drowned out in this debate, so are the student protesters’ demands, so let me reiterate them here:

• That Columbia divest of all investments that profit from Israel’s occupation and bombing of Palestine.
• That Columbia sever academic ties with its programs at Tel Aviv and other Israeli universities.
• That the policing of the campus be stopped immediately.
• That the university release a statement calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The other day, on New York’s National Public Radio station, WNYC, I heard a caller who had been a campus protester in 1968 say something like, “It’s funny how the protesters of 50 years ago are always right, but the protesters of today are always wrong.” The people who demonstrated for civil rights then were demonized, beaten, even murdered, but they were right, he pointed out, as were the people who demonstrated against the Vietnam War. (I would say the same for those who protested against the Iraq War and for the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.)

One day, the students who are protesting the genocide in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians today will be seen as on the right side, too. History will prove it. Until then, let’s turn the discussion back to where it belongs: an end to the war on Gaza.

Final Note: This piece was written before the president and trustees of Columbia called in the riot police on the night of April 30, against the advice of many faculty, to arrest the students in the encampment, as well as those who had occupied Hamilton Hall. Videos show considerable police violence against the students. What happens next remains to be seen.

Mainstream journalists and politicians have engaged in a campaign of mass slander against U.S. college students protesting the Gaza genocide. Their “antisemitism” Big Lie echoes the racist hate campaigns of the past, inciting hostility toward young people whose only crime is their dedication to justice.

A newly published survey provides some important context for these protests and undermines the smear campaign against the protesters.

Students Are Not Antisemitic

The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a project of the University of Chicago, recently published “Understanding Campus Fears After October 7 and How to Reduce Them,” subtitled “a non-partisan analysis of Antisemitism and Islamophobia among College Students and American Adults.” Robert A. Pape, political scientist and CPOST’s director, writes that its findings “are an opportunity to re-center the national discussion around students and away from politics.” Let’s hope so.

Understandably, Pape and his colleagues focus on the steps that should be taken to make all students feel safe on campus, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or politics. In doing so, their report includes important findings that deserve wider attention.

Their “antisemitism’ Big Lie echoes the racist hate campaigns of the past, inciting hostility toward young people whose only crime is their dedication to justice.

Is there a “climate of antisemitism” on campus? CPOST’s study found that college students are less Islamophobic than the general population, but they are not more antisemitic. The level of student bias against Jews is the same as their bias against Muslims, but no greater.

Why, then, is there a national debate about campus antisemitism and none about the comparable scourge of Islamophobia? What message does that send to the Muslim students whose fears are being ignored?

The Protests Aren’t Antisemitic, Either

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wants a vote on the “Countering Antisemitism Act,” but neither he nor the president have proposed similar safeguards against Islamophobia. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said that Columbia protesters have begun “to threaten lives and intimidate and harass people,” has an even more draconian antisemitism bill—also without plans to address Islamophobia.

President Biden, like the others, has condemned what he calls “antisemitic protests.” That slur is challenged by the Chicago study. The authors found that “while college students are not more antisemitic than the general population,” they are “more anti-zionist.” They also found that “prejudicial antisemitism and anti-zionism are largely separate phenomena,” with an “overwhelming” absence of any overlap between antisemitism and a negative view of Israel.

We’ve know for decades that the lie which equates anti-zionism with antisemitism serves a political goal by suppressing speech. We now have evidence to back it up.

“From the River to the Sea”

One protest slogan has been cited over and over as “antisemitic,” with accusers claiming it calls for genocide against Jews: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Most students do not use it in anything approaching a genocidal way. The CPOST study found that only 14 percent of Muslim students, or roughly one in seven, interpret that slogan “to mean the expulsion or genocide of Israeli Jews.” That figure is too high, as is the 13 percent of students who believe that violence against Muslims is sometimes justified. But it also tells us that most people who use the slogan are not calling for harm against anyone.

Does antisemitism exist among [protesters]? Since it is pervasive in this society, the answer is yes. But amplifying a comment or two from a couple of isolated individuals is a totalitarian smear tactic.

That makes sense, since the phrase can be interpreted nonviolently in at least two ways. One is that a two-state solution should include the territory ceded to Palestine in 1948, which touched both the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Another is that Israel and Palestine should become a single, democratic, non-racial and non-theocratic state, with rights and safety for all. Under that interpretation, “Palestine will be free” is no more a call to genocide than “South Africa will be free” was a call to kill whites during the anti-apartheid struggle.

The study does note that the slogan makes two-thirds of Jewish students feel unsafe. For that reason, Pape recommends avoiding it.

But we now have confirmation that campus officials, politicians, and the media are misleading the public about that phrase. They’re endangering the protesting students and worsening the fears of pro-Israeli students. They should stop.

Conclusion

The political scientist Bernard Cohen once wrote that, while the press isn’t always successful and telling people what to think, “it is stunningly successful in telling people what to think about.” The student protests are a textbook example. The debate around these protests is focused on the false charge of antisemitism, not on the moral challenge raised by the protesters.

Does antisemitism exist among them? Since it is pervasive in this society, the answer is yes. But amplifying a comment or two from a couple of isolated individuals is a totalitarian smear tactic. Republicans did it with the racist Willie Horton ads in 1988. Trump does it when he highlights crimes allegedly committed by immigrants. And politicians, journalists, and college administrators are doing it today with their charges of protester antisemitism.

CPOST’s moderate recommendations for easing campus fears include, “Clear and immediate communication by college leaders condemning violence and intimidation by students and against students on their campuses.” Instead, those leaders are ordering police violence against protesting students, as they and the political/media elite stoke more fear and hatred against them—even in the wake of the anti-protestor mob violence at UCLA. That isn’t just wrong; it’s a dereliction of duty.

As leaders, these prominent individuals have been entrusted with the care and protection of the nation’s young people. Instead, they’re slandering them and putting them at risk. Why? To distract us from a genocide.

The people who make, report, and teach history should take note: it has never been kind to those who spread Big Lies. It won’t be this time, either.

Editor's Note: The following is a statement by the Congresswoman following her vote, alongside nearly 70 Democratic colleagues, against the Antisemitism Awareness Act on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.

As a Jewish woman, I’ve experienced antisemitism all my life. I’ve been called a kike while I was waiting for a drink at a bar when I was at college. I’ve heard too many ‘jokes’ to count about my frizzy hair and my big nose. I remember my classmates who thought it was funny to say people were ‘being Jewed’ when someone was being frugal.

Conflating free speech and hate crimes will not make Jewish students any safer.

I know the hatred and ignorance that lie behind all these comments, and how they can quickly escalate into violence—and I’m deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in San Diego and across the country.

But I do not believe that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitism. I support Israel’s right to exist, but I also know many people who question whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state who are deeply connected to their Judaism.

Today, I voted against H.R. 6090, because it fails to effectively address the very real rise of antisemitism, all while defunding colleges and universities across the country and punishing many, if not all, of the non-violent protestors speaking out against the Israeli military’s conduct. Conflating free speech and hate crimes will not make Jewish students any safer. This bill would stifle First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly. And it would distract from real antisemitism and our efforts to address it.

Last week, something exciting happened: The Biden Administration announced the official launch of the American Climate Corps (in addition to rolling out $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar investments in low-income communities).

When a Climate Corps program was initially proposed by organizations like the Sunrise Movement and Congressional leaders like Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I remember thinking to myself, “Well that’s a lovely idea . . . but yeah right.” Reviving one of the most radical New Deal programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, to put thousands of young people to work decarbonizing the country? It sounded like a leftwing pipedream. But there was Biden last week, standing next to AOC to describe in concrete, practical terms how you can now apply for a job with the Corps. After five years of electoral organizing, civil disobedience, and legislative advocacy pushing this proposal, it was an announcement worth celebrating—at least for a moment— before diving back into the fight.

But for a segment of the online left, this was not a moment to celebrate. For them, given Biden's terrible Gaza policy, there was only one relevant takeaway from the event: AOC, by standing next to the president showed she was a “a pathetic, spineless coward,” as one representative tweet on X put it. Nevermind that AOC has been one of the most sustained and effective critics of Biden’s uncritical support for Israel's war; nevermind that she provided arguably the highest-profile definition of Israel’s conduct in Gaza as an “unfolding genocide”; nevermind, even, that she took the opportunity at that very Earth Day event to loudly praise campus protesters. For AOC’s haters on the left (and I think “haters” is the right word, versus, say, “critics”—while all politicians deserve accountability, the people I’m referencing here are not those offering constructive critiques of AOC), the rollout of a visionary Green New Deal program that she introduced, that would almost certainly not exist without her organizing and leadership, was just one more opportunity to call AOC a traitor to the progressive cause.

This left-wing AOC derangement syndrome has a lot to say both about the brand of politics that AOC’s haters represent and the role she occupies within our political system.

But first, it bears noting that, according to every piece of private polling I’ve seen, AOC haters comprise an extremely small slice of the American left. They may be very loud on their preferred stomping ground over on X, formerly Twitter, but they do not represent the vast majority of us. What they do represent, to a profoundly precise degree, is a particular strain of leftist politics that has been an obstacle to the goals of our movement for a very long time. Indeed, one’s stance on AOC may just be the most accurate diagnostic test we’ve got of what a supposed leftist is most interested in. Do they want to change the world, or to engage in in-group masturbatory preening? Do they want to win, or do they want to lose?

This left-wing AOC derangement syndrome has a lot to say both about AOC’s haters and the brand of politics they represent, and about AOC and the role she has taken on within our political system.

Much has been written about the proclivity of some on the left to valorize defeat—to, as my friend Sam Adler-Bell put it, “imagine there is some meaningful consolation in losing righteously.” But for those of us who take our progressive values seriously, securing a fairer world and a livable future is not just a social media talking point. It’s a necessity. In the oft-repeated words of Assata Shakur, it is not only “our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.”

Taking seriously one’s duty to win requires having a theory of change that is grounded in reality. Of course, different progressive organizers, movements, and elected officials can employ a range of varied yet equally valid visions for how we win. But to be grounded in reality means, at the very least, accepting that we live in a majoritarian democracy in which winning real change requires getting to 50% + 1. (It’s true that the authoritarian right has worked for decades to change this, to instantiate its will through the creation and maintenance of minoritarian structures, from Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression to the Federalist Society’s takeover of our courts. But that only means that, in those arenas, it’s necessary to build even broader majoritarian support to overcome and reverse those antidemocratic developments.)

That fact is not an invitation to fall back on David Shor-style “popularism,” a shallow strategy that takes for granted the immovability of the public and preemptively surrenders our ability to make bigger, more structural changes. Social movements can—and, indeed, must—shift the horizon of what’s possible. But you can’t accomplish that by retreating to your in-group lefty clubhouse, talking only to your small circle of current believers, and waiting for the world to magically change. It requires a disciplined focus on winning over persuadable people, growing our movement, engaging in coalition politics, and making once-radical propositions seem reasonable, even mundane. These are all things that AOC does incredibly well. And they’re the very same proclivities that her haters use to brand her an enemy of the cause.

Yet this approach to politics has been essential in helping the left win a series of progressive victories over the course of Biden’s first term. Indeed, in the last week alone, the administration has ordered power companies to cut pollution from coal plants, banned non-compete agreements for 40 million Americans, raised overtime wages for four million salaried workers, forced airlines to automatically offer refunds for canceled flights and poorly handled baggage, banned illegal junk fees in mortgage lending, and blocked a major corporate merger, among other significant actions.

While it’s understandable to feel that Democratic failures on Israel/Palestine overshadow accomplishments like these, they don't negate the concrete impact of such gains for millions of Americans, and they shouldn't erase the countless organizers who helped achieve these wins.

You’d need a persuasive argument for why our movements—for a livable future, unions for all, reproductive justice, and so much more—aren’t massively better off under Biden than Trump. I haven’t heard any such argument from AOC’s haters.

Of course, the most vitriolic attacks on AOC stem from her support for Biden’s reelection. But what is the alternative strategy? AOC has a clear theory of change for her position: “I think about what conditions do I want to be organizing under in the next four years . . . I would rather, even in places of stark disagreement, I would rather be organizing under the conditions of Biden as an opponent on an issue than Trump . . . I am taking [Trump’s threat to democracy] very seriously, because we will not be able to organize for any movement towards anything [under] the kind of authoritarianism that he threatens.” That’s a strong, empirically-rooted analysis. It’s possible to disagree with her position. But you’d need a persuasive argument for why our movements—for a livable future, unions for all, reproductive justice, and so much more—aren’t massively better off under Biden than Trump. I haven’t heard any such argument from AOC’s haters, or any competing, reality-based theories of change regarding the 2024 election. (To be clear, third parties don’t work in winner-take-all electoral systems, almost by definition. The only way a third party can win in a system like ours is by supplanting another party, which necessarily means it’s no longer a third party, just the other half of a structurally similar duopoly).

And I do not say this as a blind Biden partisan. I was involved in some of the very first conversations kicking off the initial “vote uncommitted” campaign in New Hampshire this year, and in my home state’s presidential primary last month I actively encouraged people to join me in voting uncommitted. These campaigns had a clear, strategic theory of change: to push Biden on Gaza now, prior to the general election, by demonstrating in the most difficult-to-ignore way that recreating his 2020 coalition will be much, much harder if he doesn’t change course. Unsurprisingly, AOC was the highest-profile politician in the country to make an argument in support of this movement—as she so often is.

Of course, I know that nothing written here has a chance of influencing any AOC haters; that group has made up its mind on the subject. This plea is for all the rest of us. Our movement needs to start calling out AOC derangement syndrome for what it is. It’s not just stupid. It’s not just cynical. It is, in actual fact, the perfect distillation of a strain of left politics that represents a betrayal of our cause. As progressives, we have a duty to win. Relentlessly tearing down one of our most effective leaders—someone who’s proven she is able to use both the legislative process and the bully pulpit to move us materially closer to the world we need and deserve—undermines our capacity to win. And that is unforgivable.

Oil companies knew since the 1950s that their product was causing catastrophic climate damage. The industry never supported the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, despite their many public statements to the contrary. Companies like BP and Shell understood the dangers of methane emissions from ‘natural’ gas, but marketed it as a clean energy solution anyways. Over the last decade, the industry has spent over $700 million on university research to promote a lasting role for fossil fuels in our energy future. ExxonMobil’s security chief is “tracking” climate activists’ whereabouts, while the American Petroleum Institute monitors their social media feeds.

Those are just some of the revelations from a 65-page report released by the Senate Budget committee ahead of a hearing on Wednesday into Big Oil disinformation. The report is the culmination of a three-year investigation into the industry’s “denial, disinformation, and doublespeak,” an inquiry which the industry tried to stymie at nearly every turn, withholding information, resisting subpoenas, and then swamping the committee with over 100,000 pages of meaningless documents.

Despite the industry’s efforts, the report is a damning portrayal of Big Oil’s decades-long crusade to simultaneously block meaningful climate action while extracting more government support for false solutions like ‘natural’ gas (aka methane) and carbon capture and sequestration. Over the course of thousands of emails, top executives, lobbyists, and PR advisors debate how to lobby against important regulations, greenwash the industry’s reputation, shape university research agendas, and mislead the public about the threat of fossil fuels.

The fossil fuel industry isn’t going to give it up willingly. Which means that the next phase of the effort to hold Big Oil accountable is going to have to pursue the industry with sharper teeth.

And that’s all from the content they were willing to share, which begs the question: what did they decide to redact? If these are the documents the industry felt best represent their harmless day-to-day operations, what sorts of bombshells are they covering up? The committee’s report reads like the flickering of a flashlight in a dark basement, giving us a snapshot of the subterranean world of Big Oil deception, while raising the question, what else hides in these dark corners?

Whatever it is, the fossil fuel industry isn’t going to give it up willingly. Which means that the next phase of the effort to hold Big Oil accountable is going to have to pursue the industry with sharper teeth.

At the federal level, that means getting the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into Big Oil disinformation. Twenty members of Congress have already sent a letter to DOJ urging such an investigation and after this week’s hearing and report, pressure will only grow. What’s needed now is for President Biden and the White House to throw their weight behind the idea. Congress can also pay their part by pursuing a more aggressive “make polluters pay” agenda, taking up bills like a windfall profits tax, which would go after Big Oil profiteering, and the Polluter Pays Climate Fund, which would make the industry pay their fair share to deal with climate damages.

At the city and state level, we need to see more lawsuits to prosecute the industry for climate damages and disinformation. Over 30 cities and states have already filed suit, but with thousands of communities already paying the costs of extreme weather, sea level rise and other climate impacts, we could see hundreds of new cases in the years to come. Lawsuits aren’t the only tool at our disposal: five states are now pursuing “climate superfund” bills that would make Big Oil pay for climate impacts by contributing to a fund based on their share of historic emissions. Vermont could pass its version as early as this summer.

Ultimately, the future of Big Oil accountability is up to us. The fossil fuel industry has spent billions on its efforts to lull us to sleep with fairy tales about ‘algae fuels’ or ‘natural’ gas. This week’s hearing was another wake up call to the reality of their deception and lies. Let’s not let it go to waste.

Do you remember President Biden's swift and strong response when pro-Israel extremists reportedly blasted the chemical weapon "skunk spray" on students peacefully protesting at Columbia University earlier this year? Do you remember how the White House condemned the attack, demanded accountability, and called on the school to protect students from such hate?

No? You don't remember? Of course you don't. Because none of it happened. President Biden didn't respond swiftly or strongly to the skunk spray attack. He didn't respond at all.

How about President Biden's response when a Texas man hurled racist slurs at a group of Palestinian Americans after a ceasefire protest at the University of Texas in Austin, ripped a Palestinian flagpole off their car, dragged one of them out of the backseat, and stabbed him?

Then again, the White House said nothing—even after our civil rights and advocacy organization directly alerted the White House about the incident.

The Biden administration's silence is nothing new.

Students honoring America's long tradition of peaceful civil disobedience deserve protection and respect, not smears and violence.

On Stanford University’s campus, a driver yelling "F—k you and your people" reportedly used his car to ram an Arab Muslim student attending a ceasefire protest, sending him to the hospital. No response from the White House.

At the University of Texas, pro-Israel extremists disrupted a Palestine Solidarity Committee meeting and hurled profanities at the attendees. No response.

In Arizona, Texas, Georgia, New York and other states, law enforcement agencies have brutalized students and even professors who attended peaceful protests against the genocide in Gaza. Again, no response.

Now contrast the White House's lack of response to violent actions motivated by anti-Palestinian hate with the White House's vocal response to inflammatory words that a small number of individuals have allegedly said at or near pro-ceasefire protests on college campuses.

“I condemn the antisemitic protests, that’s why I set up a program to deal with that,” the president said, broadly mischaracterizing the sit-ins led mostly by Jewish and Palestinian students.

In a statement marking Passover, Biden said, “Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses or anywhere in our country.”

Just this week, the White House condemned protesters at Columbia for taking over Hamilton Hall—something students protesting the Vietnam War did, which the school now celebrates on its website—and curiously declared the use of a banner with the Arabic word "intifada" hate speech.

At the same time, the White House conveniently ignored the fact that most prominent banner displayed was "Hind's Hall," named after the 6-year-old girl murdered by Israeli forces while waiting for medics—also murdered—to save her.

Hypocrisy does not begin to describe the White House's inconsistency, which extends well beyond college campuses.

Last fall, the White House rushed to falsely claim that ceasefire protesters in Philadelphia were antisemitic for demonstrating outside a kosher restaurant—the protesters actually targeted the business because it held a fundraiser benefiting the IDF.

But the White House said nothing when protesters at November's March for Israel chanted genocidal slogans. On the contrary, a prominent Biden administration official spoke at the march, sharing the stage with notoriously anti-Muslim and antisemitic pastor John Hagee.

If President Biden is going to comment on every controversy that erupts at a protest or on a college campus, he must do so with moral consistency.

While the administration is quick to condemn any allegation of antisemitism at protests, whether verified or manufactured, the administration has repeatedly failed to condemn verified incidents of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia on college campuses (not to mention the antisemitism that pro-Israel extremists have directed at Jewish students advocating for a ceasefire, such as calling them "kapos.")

Singling out the remarks of unidentified bad actors at anti-genocide protests—some of whom may be agent provocateurs—was a transparent attempt to divert the conversation away from what Jewish, Palestinian, and other students are actually protesting for: divestment from the Israeli government and an end to the genocide.

Students honoring America's long tradition of peaceful civil disobedience deserve protection and respect, not smears and violence.

By instead validating slanders against pro-Palestinian protesters and downplaying anti-Palestinian racism on college campuses, the Biden administration has sent a signal that the hurt feelings of pro-war students who cannot tolerate hearing any criticism of the Israeli government are more worthy of attention than the violated rights and injured bodies of anti-war students.

The administration also gave law enforcement agencies and pro-Israel mobs cover to escalate their targeting of students, leading to horrific attacks on students at the University of California Los Angeles.

This inconsistency—this utter hypocrisy—must end. If President Biden is going to comment on every controversy that erupts at a protest or on a college campus, he must do so with moral consistency. He can start by condemning the ongoing efforts to defame and brutalize anti-genocide students before we see more attacks on protesters or, God forbid, a repeat of the Kent State massacre.

Just like during Vietnam, a young generation of students is on the right side of history. It's long past time for President Biden to join them.