Juan Gonzlez, Veteran of '68 Columbia Strike, Condemns Current University Leaders

[Uncle Joe]

Tuesday’s raid on Columbia University came 56 years to the day that police raided Hamilton Hall, arresting 700 students protesting racism and the Vietnam War. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who was a student leader at the historic 1968 protest, says the violent crackdown on Columbia University and other campuses across the United States has refocused national attention on “an unjust war,” carried out by Israel with U.S. backing. “No commencement in America will occur in the next month where the war in Gaza is not a burning issue,” he says. He adds that the more diverse makeup of the protests today — led primarily by Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students — may have made school officials and police “much more willing to crack down” than when it was a mostly white protest movement.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

[stopdiggin]

1. well of course he does ..

wouldn't expect anything else ..
( and of course - pretty much everything done back in 68 was - like, totally righteous, man! )

[Uncle Joe]

3. The protesters were for the most part whiter back then,

did that contribute to the patience of the Columbia Administrators at having their offices occupied?

Everything wasn't righteous back then, Nixon was secretly negotiating to have the war prolonged instead of a peace agreement so as to hurt LBJ.

I don't imagine anything remotely that bad could possibly happen today, it would be inconceivable, even if Jared Kushner; son in law of *rump and longtime family friend of Netanyahu generously funded by the 1st Amendment loving crown prince of progressive Saudi Arabia believes that the Gaza strip is "valuable property."

I wonder if Jared took into consideration that every university and over 90% of the hospitals have been destroyed in Gaza?

Today's college campuses are infinitely more diverse and as result the students and protesters can be turned into "the other" by University Presidents and to a large degree the corporate media with greater ease than in 1968 with the one countering dynamic being the instant, mass, two way communication of the Internet.

The oligarchs and dictators of the world are more afraid of freedom of speech and expression than anything else.

[stopdiggin]

4. the fact that college students had comparitively lighter skin tones

'back in the day' - stood out to me as one of the weaker excuses tossed out ... For .. differences ..
And let's not fool ourselves with starry eyed revisionism. 'Protesters', 'dirty hippies' (and any college students that tried to emulate ..) - were hated with a passion, by a large slice of middle america - including the cops, the corparates, college presidents and media powers. So, the idea that the powers that be were patting little 'white skinned Johnny' on the head and largely issuing a pass ... That just ain't the way it went down - by a large marginl!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[Uncle Joe]

5. They occupied the offices for an entire week, before

the Administration called in the police.

If they had been primarily brown or black students, do you believe Columbia's President would've waited a an entire week in 1968 before calling in the police?

Race still plays a part; whether great or small in virtually all parts of modern human society.

Having said that, I believe humanity is making progress toward cultural and/or species wide enlightenment but we're not there yet.

[Goddessartist]

2. Thank you, Uncle Joe,

for posting this.

He's absolutely right.

[Warpy]

6. Naw, this is't any better or any worse than, say, the Harvard shutdown in 1969

which is something I visited, southern hick getting the lay of the land and all that. Their issues are different and yes, the makeup consists of more than upper middle class and mostly white male students. It's still the same old, same old. There was a crackdown back then, too, nobody particularly liked the kind of white male who was going to be their boss because of his birthright instead of any innate ability. Cops weren't particularly gentle when they rousted the future ruling class.

Memory is a funny thing, I remember it quite differently as an outsider viewing it all with a jaundiced eye than it is remembered by insiders experiencing their glory days.