by Don Hall

A man was sitting in his car, late for work, waiting for protesters blocking traffic to make their point. The protesters were mostly young, mostly white, and very passionate about the United States divesting from Israel in support of the Palestinians. He noticed that some of what he thought were women wearing the keffiyehs required of women in Gaza without irony. Signs for "Dykes for Divestment' and 'From the River to the Sea' were displayed by masked up twenty-year olds balancing the placards with one hand and their smartphones in the other as they TikTok'd their presence on the highway.

Despite the fact that he currently had roughly $100 in his bank account, three maxed out credit cards, and had to turn his own phone to silence all unknown callers to avoid the barrage of robocalls from debt collectors, he realized that the kids were right. This will make the difference. These kids blocking traffic will shift the discourse and force Israel to give up and throw themselves into the sea. My mind has been changed!

Never happened, ever. Never will.

In 2020, the world saw one of the largest consistent mass protests in the history of the country. Right leaning news framed the violence and anger; Left leaning news framed it all as peaceful. In the middle was the truth. Most of the protests in 2020 were, in fact, peaceful but angry with a minority of those movements fomenting rioting and looting. As I recall a majority of those protesting were young white Americans in full support of the #BLM movement calling for increased police accountability, defunding those same police, and a whole cloth acceptance of the vague message that it all was due to white supremacy and systemic racism.

Less than a year later, 65% of those white kids had moved on from the #BLM cause. How could it be that the plurality of those going out into the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd and the system writ large could simply ignore the kind of hard work required for systemic change?

Because a great many of them were bored and angry that the world had shut down due to a pandemic. They wanted something to do, something to scream about, something to be a part of that was not a Zoom gallery. The country was historically in one of the least certain places as a virus we did not understand unleashed and we had little information to clarify its effects resulting in a nearly complete stoppage of the paradigm of life to which we were accustomed. Schools were shut down, we were told we had to sanitize our groceries, wear masks we couldn't find or figure out how to properly wear, and when the opportunity to get outside of the house, ignore social distancing requirements, and be among other young humans, they took it with fervor.

We now have a smaller yet significant series of protest parties across universities. While there are certainly a portion of protesting students who understand the nuances of the region's complexities, know that "from the river to the sea" is effectively a call for the death or displacement of seven million Israelis, and get that the stated goal of Hamas is the genocide of Jews, most protests are performative cosplay, or mass meet-ups of the angry, the radical, the lonely or the misinformed.

In the official request for divestment filed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the group said that the Israeli occupation of Palestine had caused “immeasurable violence” to the Palestinian people for 75 years. That number—75 years—dates the “occupation” to 1948, the establishment of Israel. It cannot be a reference to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which began in 1967. The reference to 75 years is not buried deep in the document—it’s in the second sentence. This letter that considers the very existence of Israel to be an occupation was signed by 89 student groups on December 1.

This is serious stuff. This is not a call for a cease-fire or a two-state solution. This is more than anti-war no matter how you slice it. Serious intent, serious protest, yes?

On the other hand, in the stated pursuit to improbably influence the eradication of Jews in Israel, a PhD student named Johannah King-Slutzky spoke to the press about students’ demands, which included catering. When a reporter asked her, “Why should the university be obligated to provide food to people who have taken over a building?” King-Slutzky replied, “First of all, we’re saying they are obligated to provide food to students who pay for a meal plan here.”

“I guess it’s ultimately a question of what kind of a community and obligation Columbia has to its students,” King-Slutzky reflects. “Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even if they disagree with you?”

In other words, students want the freedom to protest without any discomfort whatsoever like a kid living in his parents' home demanding his laundry be pressed and meals served because of, what? Basic decency? Even if he routinely calls his father a fascist and insists on plastering anti-mom posters in the windows every day?

Thought experiment. If a cohort of students occupied in encampments were calling for sending blacks back to Africa with frequent chants to "Kill the Blacks" or demands that universities divest from all engagement with Muslims and the expulsion of Muslims from Phildelphia or Chicago, it would be shut down immediately as hate speech, not free speech. No one would put up with it. These protests have made clear that the only acceptable hate speech is antisemitic.

More to the point is the question of effect. Despite how we perceive these protests—occupying campuses, blocking traffic, gluing hands to the floors of art galleries after tossing soup at paintings—what are the lasting results of this most recent spate of youth-led protest activity?

Four years ago, American cities were overrun (and set on fire in small cases) to defund the police and certain cities and councils put those initiatives in place. The next year, many of those cities — including New York, Los Angeles, Denver and Dallas — restored and even increased police funding in response to surging violent crime. Police reforms are now being rolled back in cities and states across the country, with "defund the police" shifting from a progressive slogan to a Republican weapon that very few Democrats align with.

DEI initiatives are being rolled back in record numbers. Standardized testing was eliminated for a time and are now back in force. We are required to announce our pronouns, though.

The protests of 2020 did accomplish one very important thing reflected in the responses to today’s Gaza protests. Municipal authorities already know they aren’t going to allow a lot of protest anymore in fear that it will become the violent/peaceful protests of four years ago. Protest is constitutionally protected but squatting in order to do so isn’t. Go ahead and call it accountability culture or some sort of nonsense.

The easy answer to why these goals are being reversed is to blame it on Republicans in lockstep but the better answer is that change happens slowly and in back rooms rather than in performative occupations. Real progress happens in consistent and tenacious focus on working with authority rather than showing up for the party but splitting for something else when it's time to clean things up following the angry reverie. Genuine forward momentum is nearly invisible, will not make for a viral TikTok, and most definitely isn't accompanied with a meal plan.