Definitely shitty of them, but my point is that I doubt anyone at USC protesting this genocide is all that concerned with not getting a graduation ceremony right now.
The university said it will still host dozens of commencement events, including all the traditional individual school commencement ceremonies.
So it looks like they still have a regular ceremony from from the individual school, as usual. Just the main commencement is canceled. Everyone will still get their moment.
Man… I support the Gaza protests. But this is a stupid take. I hope instead of going to work or celebrating your birthday, or getting married, or doing anything remotely joyful, you protest Gaza. If you’re not giving up life’s big moments in solidarity with Gaza, you’re not honoring their ruined lives.
Edit: I hope the people downvoting are out protesting right now. Don’t be hypocrites. Rather than downvoting on Lemmy, you should be canceling all other activities in your life and try to get arrested for Gaza.
The graduation ceremony isn’t your reward for your work. At least, it shouldn’t be. Your reward for graduating is the opportunities that you’ve opened for yourself for the next chapter of your life. I didn’t go to mine and I haven’t regretted it for a second. The knowledge didn’t leave my brain, at least not as a result of missing graduation.
My memory of my high school graduation ceremony was staring into the hot sun sweating up a dress shirt under a cheap and useless polyester smock that cost me a lot more than it cost to make while people I didn’t care about and who didn’t care about me made speeches with completely fake gravitas. It was the last time I saw a couple dozen people whose names I used to know and a couple hundred people whose names I never learned.
Why the fuck do we still bother with this crap? Who is it for?
Well, at the end of mine I handed the principal a frog instead of shaking his hand. I considered that worth the cost of admission, even taking into account having to leg it afterwards. (They did try, but failed, to withhold my diploma over it. That part was almost as hilarious as frog itself.)
I was already on the administration’s shit-list for calling out the selfsame principal earlier that week for taking credit for our star overachiever student when, in point of fact, the principal had just transferred to that school the same year as this kid’s senior year and was therefore not present for 75% of it. Pointing this out publicly, during the principal’s speech crowing over this, was apparently “not appropriate.”
You know you can just take the diploma and not show up? My college wanted like $200 for the official cap and gown. I said fuck that and moved out graduation weekend.
They mail out the real diploma anyway.
“Oh well you didn’t get that memory!” Of what? Being fleeced by the corporation that just fleeced me for four years, so I can be hot for 3 hours sitting nowhere near anyone I’ve met before? No thanks, I went to dinner with my GF (now wife) and had more fun than anyone who went.
The moment they canceled the Valedictorian speech, I would have simply failed to show up to the commencement. And I would have done my best to surprise USC of it. And I’d have organized or at least hoped other people would do the same thing.
Most of them in this article, all but one, were arrested for trespassing. The one was arrested for suspected assault with a deadly weapon.
As has been the practice with these protests. The campuses have suspended the protesting students, which allows them to be trespassed.
The reason is they are protesting for the “wrong” side in the eyes of the media machine.
As lethargic as I have become to the world and all the bullshit. For some reason this is the last straw for me. If people can’t see how the media works to sway us in certain ways and will just gas light us then I don’t know what to say, but I will be becoming more radical from this point on.
Suspended for having an unpopular (with the establishment) opinion. It’s funny how young people across the country are against genocide. It’s almost as though the older generations are completely out of touch. Kind of like with the USA war of aggression in East Asia (Vietnam) protests back in the day.
The olds have been indoctrinated to think Israel can do no wrong. They are steadfast against finding out that they were themselves wrong.
Because fuck this nearly century-old ethno-religious blood feud.
If peace-loving people on both sides got together and decided to institute a single government that upholds the rights of all, this would end tomorrow. But they don’t. Because the reality is both sides would prefer to wallow in their anger and hate than actually solve the problem.
I’m not gonna waste my time protesting for Israelis to unilaterally impose their way on Palestinians, and I’m not gonna protest for Palestinians to unilaterally impose their way on Israelis. And no one is asking me to protest anything else. So there’s no solution, it’s all just a big waste of everyone’s time.
Like I said, I’m not asking for your reasons why you don’t want to. That’s on you. The rest of us should go and turn this protest into a movement. Why stop at Isreal? We have plenty of grievances. Let’s go.
I know several Jewish people who voted for Trump in 2016. People are willing to do all kinds of terrible, short-sighted things for flimsy justifications.
The really funny part is, it’s not like Biden or the Democrats have even been supporting the protests (outside of a small handful like The Squad and Bernie, the latter of whom isn’t even really a Democrat).
If student unions can organize with worker unions for protests/strikes that seems like a possible way we’ll get enough momentum going to think about a general strike for some long overdue reforms
I thought we’d have mass uprisings when we saw all the videos of police over-reach / violence in 2020. That it didn’t happen then sort of quelled my expectation that it could ever happen, but who knows? This conflict is sustained in a way that has really touched a nerve with young people.
There were massive protests. We just haven’t finished the job of restructuring police in America. Once that happens the history books will acknowledge how far and wide protests were. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests
Watching the American democracy go down and the Palestinian people with it. So many young people losing hope and the alt right will elect a man even more opposed to the Palestinian cause than the current government of the United States. What a time so be alive.
Unfortunately, revolutions don’t happen in a peaceful way. The ones in charge of this country would not simply give that power up without a fight. They won’t even let college students protest US support of Israel, peacefully.
the alt right will elect a man even more opposed to the Palestinian cause than the current government of the United States
It always gets me when we’ve got a government in which both parties rubber stamp another $4B genocide re-armerment bill, and you’ve still got some chucklefucks logging on to say “We need to support Biden if we want to help Palestinians”.
Like, fucking fine. He’s marginally better on Net Neutrality and maternity leave and green energy and student debt relief.
But maybe lets not drag 40,000 Palestinian corpses into the room and say “They want you to vote for Joe Biden, too”.
I don’t want to vote for anyone, because I am not a US citizen, but if I were, yes, I would say vote for Biden regardless. Why? Because even as a non US citizen I know enough about Project 2025 and this is not the future I want to see for this world. One good thing about Biden is that he will leave office when he loses. Last time Trump lost you nearly got a coup d’etat. But yeah, my comment wasn’t exactly about Biden vs Trump but more about the hopelessness of the current situation where it seems to get worse irrelevant of the direction you go.
I think it is just as simple as “oh no the youths” reminder when Reagan was governor of California he cracked down on a small protest over some benign shit, it wasnt even violent until Reagan stepped in the students and administrators were in talks about the whole situation.
Eventually every mishandled conflict becomes about the response to the conflict instead of the issue that started it. I still remember the end of OWS when no one was talking about the bailouts anymore instead talking about the difference between camping and protesting I also remember the daily reminders that some anti-war protestor in 2003 threw acid at a cop.
People have the right to make their voice heard. Governments should understand that, establish areas where they can make it heard, and do nothing to make it turn violent. Likewise protestors should make sure that they focus on the issue they care about an expel ones that start shit.
Disruption is an essential part of protest, otherwise it can just be entirely ignored. It’s meant to force results. If there’s enough support for it, it grows as the government cracks down on it (like BLM did in 2020) and becomes a conflict of attrition. If there isn’t, then the protesters get punished and the people celebrate it (like the truckers protesting covid restrictions in Canada).
It’s weird how now the protests are labeled “pro-Palestinian” instead of “anti-war” as they always have before. In 2003 people were anti-war, not pro-Iraqi. In the '60s people were anti-war, not pro-South-Vietnamese. Some propaganda outlets are even calling today’s anti-war protesters “pro-Hamas”.
My guess would be because we aren’t at war. It could equally just be because the media has an agenda that is furthered by that, or both of these. Anyone saying pro-Hamas shouldn’t be trusted at all though.
Old people have a suicide death grip on this country and they would rather die and be buried under the rubble of their own hubris than let the people that have an actual stake in the future change anything.
Why is everyone afraid of college students protesting?
Its not fear, its a show of force. This is an opportunity to unleash pent up rage and inflict callous brutality on a group of people that mass media have flogged and hated on for decades. College students are poor, weak, and exceptionally vulnerable. Teachers are poor and overworked and increasingly precarious in their employment. College campuses are hotbeds of Marxism according to your average Boomer or news hour talking head.
So this is where municipal and state officials can drop the hammer unimpeded. This is where they can really indulge in their fascist impulses. This is where they know nobody will try and stop them.
I mean this police state response goes back to before Kent State and Tianemen square no doubt.
If Tienanmen Square happened in DC today, the guy standing in front of the tank would be labeled at Tankie by the NYT Op-Ed section.
They are afraid of being labeled anti-semitic. That is what is driving this. Allowing the protests to exist gets the uni/president labeled anti-semitic, and that is unacceptable for the universities. The universities are then asking the police to break them up by force, because violent against students is more acceptable than being labeled anti-Semitic.
This is why freedom of speech is important and why it’s important to argue specifics instead of generalities.
It’s easy to say something is “antisemitic” and get an emotional response from useful idiots. It’s a lot harder to explain why something is antisemitic and get the same response if it’s not actually antisemitic.
I don’t think it’s the protesting, but rather the target of the protests. For some reason Israel seems to be held in higher regard than any American interest. We can protest and shit talk our own terrible politicians all day long and nobody really bats an eye. But ask that we stop murdering innocent brown children in Gaza? Threaten economic consequences for Israel if they don’t stop the murder? For some reason that is a grave offense worthy of trampling on our first amendment rights.
Think about how wild that is - speaking out against the atrocities a foreign government is committing is worthy of taking away your freedom in the US.
The joy of a country run by religious loons that believe Israel will kickstart the Second Coming for them.
Remember, everyone: they want Israel to start a serious war in the Middle East. Because that’s the first step in all the Jews dying and those old rich white Christians being raptured up to heaven.
If anything, the only reason they don’t want it to start now is because they haven’t convinced all the Jews to go back to Israel yet.
The hippies were a tiny minority. They were called the counter culture for that reason. They never had a chance to make an effective larger change, because there just weren’t enough of them
My parents are in their 70s and 80s, as are their friends. The ones that overdid it with the drugs may have shortened their lifespan, but there were/are plenty of earthy/crunchy hippies that never even did more than smell weed. My mom and her friends were/are some of them
Protests like these are often what politicians’ lives are built on. These students will be seen on the right side of history, and to have the conviction to be jailed for it? That would get my vote.
What do you call 34,000 dead, 2/3rds of which are women and children? And mass graves of 400 of women, the elderly, and wounded at hospital sites? What’s the difference between mass murder and that? Or do you just prefer the word genocide? Because that seems worse…
Okay, let’s talk about this seriously, thank you for your non-emotional reply.
We go back to the initial cause of this war. I would like to ask you what Israel should have done instead of what they did. Was there an alternative that did not involve striking back?
Im no international relations expert, I just know genocide is bad. But, if I were forced into the position, I’d probably suggest striking back proportionally, then make a deal to return hostages. This would probably involve negotiating for a two state, or even better a one state, solution. Negotiate with PLO to legitimize them, take the wind out of Hamas recruitment by giving the Palestinians full rights and sovereignty. Get international agencies in, and not just biased ones like the US and Germany, to help negotiate this so everyone gets heard. Basically, do something akin to dealing with what South Africa did, or how LBJ would negotiate with MLK to avoid dealing with the more militant black movements, or how they dealt with the IRA (negotiations, not violence).
But that is what they did? Strike back and the whole time try to get the hostage back. All they needed to do was give the hostage back to get a cease fire, but they didn’t. It same way there is no way to have peace with Putin, he simply does not want it. We can not negotiate with someone who declines or makes absurd demands.
Palestine did not get a “jail” because everyone around wanted to be mean to them. It got that way because of what the kept doing over and over. They have to change first before the others can open up again. Their terror attack only proved they are neither changing nor willing to change. So suggesting that is the way forward is really odd given what those around had to endure in the last decades. Like giving sweets to a toddler that is throwing a tantrum, that is not how it works.
Sorry, had a busy weekend lol. Anyway, where were we?
I’m talking about proportional strike back. Israel has gone way beyond that, to the point that the north of Gaza isn’t even livable in anymore. They’ve killed tens of thousands of civilians, numerous hospitals, refugee camps, cultural centers, etc. There’s no infrastructure, no water, no power. People are starving to death and dying of thirst. It’s complete annihilation.
Of course Hamas isn’t going to give the hostages back for a simple, temporary ceasefire. It’s their only leverage. It just leads to the same situation they were in before of slowly losing land and rights. They are not asking for absurd demands. They’re asking for their rights and land back. The countless protests by families of the hostages proves Bibi doesn’t care about them at all. They’re a good excuse to keep killing Palestinians, but that’s it. If anything, it’s just causing the deaths of more hostages.
And your last paragraph suggests a very strange reading of history. Palestine has been defending themselves from settler colonialism and Israeli terrorist groups since before Israel was a country. Peaceful resistance hasn’t helped at all. The March for Return just got them a bunch of dead people, maiming, and blown off kneecaps. They’ve been asking for help from the international community for 70 years and Israel refuses to let them return to their homes or form any sort of state.
They’ve been slowly losing due to Western propping up of this colonialist project. But people aren’t going to just lay down and let themselves lose everything their ancestors have worked for for generations. Of course they’re going to fight. They’re not throwing a temper tantrum, they’re trying to prevent themselves from going as extinct as the Native American, Australian aboriginal, or indigenous Canadians. Seeing that is just being realistic. You would do the same thing in their situation. So, if they want an actual solution, they can either complete their genocidal project, or try to negotiate for peace by sharing power and living space. Everyone who has a heart doesn’t want option #1.
Hamas is not asking for absurd demands? Until recently it was even in their constitution that they want to destroy Israel. They can not live with Israel, there is no way for them to accept that. They only know a holy flight. They teach their children to only know hate. That is why they invest everything into weapons, instead of building Palestine, they do not even have fresh water everywhere. Instead, they dig out UN water pipes to build more rockets. And they even use footage of that as propaganda, thinking that they look great doing that. It is a massive tragedy.
I mean yes, obviously Hamas is bad. I just mean in this very specific case, they’ve been asking for things like a permanent ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, freedom of movement for Palestinians in Northern Gaza where they lived, and release of Palestinian hostages (who are often held without charge, and they’ve often asked for captured women and children, too, not just male Hamas fighters). Those things aren’t absurd.
Yes, that is the point where Israel is doing bad stuff. No question, neither side is innocent here. Let’s see what happens when Hamas is wiped out. Perhaps with those cancerous radicals removed can Palestine finally flourish and not only focus on terrorism. I hope both sides will see this as a chance for a better future instead of more hatred.
The protests are not in support of Hamas. They are protesting against a continuing genocide taking place with the support of their own government. I, personally, believe that genocide is bad, no matter who commits it.
If that worked it would still cost a million dollars for the machete and my insurance could only cover the first 96 cents…after I yelled at them on the phone for three hours
At first, I thought this might be the University of South Carolina, and I was impressed as hell. For Southern California, though, I’m surprised that protesting isn't a graduation requirement.
Edit: Do people think I’m insulting student protesters? I’m not. They’re important, and it’s okay to make fun of friends.
Maybe the side that has 1000x the military capabilities could respond proportionately for once in history? Maybe stop murdering children for throwing rocks at IDF soldiers? Maybe don’t indiscriminately kill women and children or bomb hospitals and schools?
They want the US to stop supplying weapons to a genocidal state and actually put pressure on Israel to stop with the wanton destruction. The US is propping up it’s ally with millions of $ in bombs, missiles, and other such weapons in what are ultimately being used to murder men, women, and children that have nothing to do with this war besides live in Gaza. The IDF is murdering, raping, executing, humiliating, mauling, torturing, and harming men, women, and children. Fuck them. The US should not be supporting this sort of treatment of civilians. Did that answer your pedantic, little “gotcha” question gramps?
Unfortunately the military industrial complex demands to be fed and all we have right now are proxy wars. So propping up the IDF it is (along with the much more worthy support of Ukraine)
Damn, if only there were more than just the two options. I mean, we stop funding genocide and then Hamas immediately wins, that’s the only possible way it could go, right?
Don’t call yourself anticapitalist scum. Your mother may say those things about you, but you don’t have to say those things about yourself.
Speaking of playbooks, I see you are using the tactic of just accusing everybody you don’t like of being paid opposition. Stalin taught you well, little buddy.
Are you just dense? The idea isn’t “no funding for Israel” the idea is “no funding for Israel until they start following international law and stop indiscriminately killing.”
Hamas is awful and should be destroyed but two wrongs don’t make a right and Israel is going much too far. Israel isn’t attacking Hamas at this point. They are doing to the Gazans what Hamas did to Israel, but a hundred fold worse. They are acting like either a terrorist organization or a genocidal regime.
I’m all for Israel defending itself. I am mostly okay with funding Israel to defend itself and stand up for itself. I am absolutely not for funding genocide and wars of retribution. At this point Israel needs to be brought to heel and, when safe, needs to be held accountable for its crimes and it’s long term policies of apartheid.
By the way, does this ever work? It’s very clear what I was doing, and the fact that you can’t defend the position when it is worded bluntly says a lot.
My concern is that this genocide has given you a sense of purpose, and you are having too much fun to ever let it end.
What the fuck is wrong with you? What a disgusting thing to say. I would say that you should be ashamed, but we’ve already established that shame is not something you experience.
Massive self-report though. You are so incapable of understanding that a person could care so much about people they’ve never met, that you’re searching for possible alternatives and grasping at straws. “This guy cannot possibly care this much about another human being, therefore, there must be an ulterior motive.” At least we all know you’re a sociopath now.
you might want to consider taking your humanity back.
You are allowed to say whatever disgusting thing comes into your mind, even offering your family to goad somebody you believe is genocidal.
What I said is the truth. This is fun for you. Even the crocodile tears you now show is just part of a game for you.
You haven’t helped a single Palestinian by accusing random people on the internet of being pro-genocide. How can you? You refuse to even hold an honest discussion with people who are anti-Hamas.
So maybe leave the saving lives to honest people who are able to actually help the Palestinians until you are willing to be one of them.
Not preemptive, the Jihad was first called by Iran in 1992, I believe.
We have two belligerent sides and a people trapped in the middle. I think trying to pull gotchas online with people on the same side as you is doing nothing to help those people.
Alright, I understand that a lot of people have called you out on your logical inconsistencies in this thread so you must be confused about what I’m referring to. You used the argument I quoted as a reason why the U.S. should not stop funding Israel’s genocide, because if they did then Iran and Qatar would commit genocide against Israel. When prole mentioned how wrong the idea of pre-emptive genocide is, you went off on a tangent. A pretty tasteless one. Are you going to address the pre-emptive genocide idea?
I think trying to pull gotchas online with people on the same side as you is doing nothing to help those people.
I don’t disagree. I’ve seen on this thread that you try to change the subject whenever someone questions your idea so I hope you will finally address the pre-emptive genocide idea that was brought up some 10 comments ago. And it’s ok to make mistakes and change your mind when you get new information or a new understanding. It’s a good thing.
I think it takes a lot of pretending on your part to construe my saying that Western money until now has saved more lives on both sides than it has taken as me saying that preemptive genocide is okay is probably one of the most dishonest things anybody has yet said in this thread.
No doubt. Check their post history, it’s a hasbara account. I was just trying to be diplomatic, although I did appreciate your comment that got removed by the mods. “I’m the calm one, but my crew is sorta sick” lol.
But they don’t because they actually value life, unlike the baby killing, house people snatching low life animals that are Hamas.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA what the fuck are you even on about? Bruh, you literally describe to a T what Israel is doing and then blame Hamas. Or did I miss the 75 years of Hamas bulldozing houses for settlers?
Go cheer on Israel throwing more bodies in a mass grave and lying about the shit they find to gullible rubes.
You all need to stop believing Hamas Israeli funded news sites and look at how they actually, and cowardly, fight Israel the Palestinian people.
“Hamas funded news sites” lol stop, you’re (figuratively) killing me like Israel (literally) murders people in refuge camps and humanitarian corridors.
Edit: I just really have to come back and point out how stupid this comment is
because they actually value life
Because if they actually cared about human life they’d open up aid and not withhold food and water as collective punishments against the uprising caused by decades of Israel not giving a shit about Palestinian lives.
If anyone was wondering if propaganda works, just take a look at that person’s comment… This person clearly does not see Palestinians as human. Not an exaggeration this time. This is what compulsory military service (funded by the largest and most advanced military in the world) in a literal ethnostsate looks like.
In 6-months, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, and wounded more than 78,000.
70% of those casualties are women and children.
Israel has destroyed more than 221,000 housing units, leaving almost half the population homeless.
Israel has decimated their civilian infrastructure, electricity, water, and sewage.
Israel has destroyed 26 hospitals, killed more than 400 healthcare workers.
Israel has destroyed every single University in Gaza, 56 different schools, and badly damaged hundreds more, leaving over half a million students without access to education.
Israel has violated international law. It has blocked foreign aid to help these people, leaving them starving, sick, destitute, and dying…
…and yet, it’s apparent that you believe that it’s okay for the IDF to do this. The fact that you even have the gall to comment on this either means that you’re so belligerently ignorant of the situation that you legitimately believe that the IDF is in the “right” here - in which case, you’re a reactionist, a weaponized pawn that merely gets angry at what they are told to be angry at (i.e. you are no better than a herded sheep)…or…this means that you legitimately think this is acceptable behaviors, and you exemplify the sickness in humanity that exists today. That wanton death and destruction is okay to you is frankly revolting, and the world will be a better place when you and people like you are gone from it.
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