BAR HARBOR—The tents went up Sunday evening and the newest college campus encampment appeared and as of Tuesday, April 30, approximately 26 tents occupy the front lawn of the College of the Atlantic (COA) campus.
ThankYou for this reporting. It is a developing story. Both students and the administration are behaving responsibly. Off to a good start. An encampment only in solidarity with other students world wide as an expression of concern for the people of Gaza is admirable in itself. We must wait to hear the students' further concerns and demands. I say this as an American Jew and a Zionist - who has protested successive and increasingly extremist Netanyahu regimes and the appropriation of Zionism by right wing religious extremists, Jewish and Christian, American and Israeli.
The Hamas atrocities on Oct 7 did not happen in a vacuum. The Netanyahu regime did not have to respond with a disproportionate military assault which has created an almost unimaginable humanitarian crisis. What if on Oct 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu had gone before the world and called on every nation and all people to help release the hostages - who included people from many countries (as did the slaughtered.) In doing this Netanyahu could have put the spotlight on Hamas and made release of the hostages a priority. Instead the Netanyahu regime's unprecedented intelligence failure has lead to their unprecedented military and political failure. As Israel piles human wreckage on human wreckage the Hamas atrocities - and the hostages - are in the shadows.
"In 1973, legendary Israeli diplomat Abba Eban famously quipped: "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
Neither does Netanyahu. In early 2023 an American diplomat who'd served in Israel wrote: "The U.S. — particularly our team at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Security Coordinator — gave the Israeli government a decade-long opportunity to reduce tensions in, of all places, Jenin. More importantly, we forged the political space to build a more peaceful, enduring coexistence between the Israeli and Palestinian people. Yet, the Netanyahu government missed this remarkable opportunity, failing to envision a reality that protected Israeli citizens while meeting Palestinian political aspirations." Instead "the Netanyahu government sought to reestablish the four settlements Ariel Sharon evacuated a generation ago, effectively messaging to the Jenin Governorate that a decade of stability was meaningless." https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3837286-israelis-missed-an-opportunity-again/
This is just one example. Netanyahu's bromance with Trump is full of examples - most notably moving the US embassy to contested Jerusalem and the Abrahamic Accords which by design excluded Palestinians from discussion of their own future.
Gaza is Netanyahu's Gotterdammerung. It is everybody else's tragedy. We should all protest.
Your statement is admirable, at least in the beginning, but Zionism has always been genocidal, even as it was practiced by the Puritans who came to Turtle Island in the 17th century to slaughter Native Americans and steal their land. That genocide is also ongoing because that land has not been returned to its proper owners. (It even inspired the Nazis, as explored in many academic texts, for instance "Hitler's American Model.")
The struggle is the same in Palestine. Netanyahu is just a scapegoat, and if he is dethroned, he will just be replaced with some other equally bloodthirsty American imperialist puppet. As for the so-called "terrorism" of Hamas, people have a legal right to violently resist their own extermination. Palestinians have undertaken peaceful protests before—and the Zionist entity responded by mowing them down by the hundreds with the same machine guns which are brought into American schools to terrorize American children. Before 10/7, 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinian children in a decade. "Whoever is in solidarity with our corpses but not our rockets is a hypocrite and not one of us."
To both-sides genocide is not a good look. Civilians perished during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising—and imagine both-sidesing the Holocaust! Yet liberals are against every war except the current war, and in favor of every civil rights movement except the current one. The Zionist entity is an outpost of Western imperialism, a genocidal project from day one, and has nothing to do with Judaism. I say this as a Jew.
Let it suffice to say. You are grievously mistaken. In your assertions and your rhetoric. Lies obstruct the cause of justice and mercy. Irrational habits of mind undermine coming to consensus through the reasoned debate of empirical evidence.
For people who sold their souls to Mammon a long time ago, it's difficult to believe that others might risk their lives and careers to help people whom they have never met.
Exactly who has lost their soul to mammon in this scenario and what are COA students risking right now by setting up a tent on a cozy campus on the ocean in Maine?
"Lot of pup tents but where are the actual protestors?"
The physical encampment itself is a statement of protest and solidarity.
Robin Givhan has a profoundly insightful essay on tents as signifiers. I quote the beginning and end below. There is a link to the entire essay.
"It’s been a long time since a tent was simply a tent. Today, it almost certainly represents an issue, a problem, a population with which society would prefer not to contend.
. . . The tents shame countries, cities and individuals for their failures even when the voices of the activists fall silent, when the chanting stops and the sun sets. The tents are still there . . . . [to] remind us of inequality, of the unpredictability of unfairness, of the ways in which capitalism and the American Dream don’t work. They represent one immoral truth out of many. And whether leaders criminalize them, bulldoze them or ridicule them doesn’t matter. The problems endure because the problem is never the tent."
-Robin Givhan
"America’s tents are pitched on shameful truths" Washington Post
If the kids at COA truly want to help the people of Gaza they should sell all those expensive tents and send the money to Gaza relief agencies. Until they do that all they are hurting is the lawn under the tents and making the lives of the grounds crew more difficult.
Although they are both necessary - protest is not sufficient, donations are not sufficient. These students are demonstrating solidarity with a wider community while seeking practical local solutions to elements of the larger problem. They are acting responsibly. I expect they will take care of the grass and clean up after themselves.
Call me cynical if you wish but having covered antiwar campus activism as a photojournalist in the 60s and 70s I find a dozen empty pup tents on the lawn and a set of politeness rules by a college president a bit on the tepid side when it comes to opposing genocide in Gaza. Someone earlier suggested virtue signaling as the goal…could be I suppose.
At SUNY-Binghamton there were two anti-war protest groups. One group would go through the school buildings and ask the classes to take a vote on whether to join teach-ins out on the lawn. The other group would go through, and march around the buildings, yelling through bullhorns to disrupt the classes. I guess you might call the first tepid. But the point is you don't need drama and violent conflict to make a point about the human wreckage of war. That I think is the brilliance of the tent encampments. They quietly signify solidarity. Which in itself is important. Both the quiet and the solidarity. And they present the question - 'what can we do here.' Important in itself. The students are keeping it local - to see how they might put some distance between COA and militarism. If in fact COA has such ties. Learning that is another benefit of the protest.
I have never advocated nor approved "violence" as a tactic on campus or off. Having seen students bayoneted for opposing the invasion of Cambodia I know only too well the perils of mass crowd psychosis. At the same time I tend to judge the sincerity of political advocacy groups by the amount they invest of themselves in their cause. Setting up expensive camping tents on lawns might be an okay first step to opposing genocide in Gaza but I eagerly await 2nd, 3rd, and 4th steps as proof of something more substantial than virtue signaling. In the meantime selling those expensive tents and donating the money to Gaza support efforts would make a great second step!
Given that Biden and all the Republicans and Democrats have executed, via their proxy Netanyahu and the Zionist entity, tens of thousands of children in Gaza—given that Palestine itself has been held hostage by Western imperialism since 1922—given that there are currently 123 hostages currently held by Hamas—given that Netanyahu has stated that he will invade Rafah regardless of whether the hostages are returned—given that you doubtless subscribe to the idea that all lives matter—shouldn't more than 99% of your concern be for the Palestinian people? It's such a wonder how liberals, Nazis, and reasonable moderates all believe that history began on October 7th, and time itself did not exist before then!
The COA protestors' demands are constrained to the COA community. The students are asking to work with college administrators - to investigate, spotlight, and take responsible action to mitigate injustice. Locally. That is very much in keeping with the ethos of COA.
ThankYou for this reporting. It is a developing story. Both students and the administration are behaving responsibly. Off to a good start. An encampment only in solidarity with other students world wide as an expression of concern for the people of Gaza is admirable in itself. We must wait to hear the students' further concerns and demands. I say this as an American Jew and a Zionist - who has protested successive and increasingly extremist Netanyahu regimes and the appropriation of Zionism by right wing religious extremists, Jewish and Christian, American and Israeli.
The Hamas atrocities on Oct 7 did not happen in a vacuum. The Netanyahu regime did not have to respond with a disproportionate military assault which has created an almost unimaginable humanitarian crisis. What if on Oct 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu had gone before the world and called on every nation and all people to help release the hostages - who included people from many countries (as did the slaughtered.) In doing this Netanyahu could have put the spotlight on Hamas and made release of the hostages a priority. Instead the Netanyahu regime's unprecedented intelligence failure has lead to their unprecedented military and political failure. As Israel piles human wreckage on human wreckage the Hamas atrocities - and the hostages - are in the shadows.
"In 1973, legendary Israeli diplomat Abba Eban famously quipped: "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
Neither does Netanyahu. In early 2023 an American diplomat who'd served in Israel wrote: "The U.S. — particularly our team at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Security Coordinator — gave the Israeli government a decade-long opportunity to reduce tensions in, of all places, Jenin. More importantly, we forged the political space to build a more peaceful, enduring coexistence between the Israeli and Palestinian people. Yet, the Netanyahu government missed this remarkable opportunity, failing to envision a reality that protected Israeli citizens while meeting Palestinian political aspirations." Instead "the Netanyahu government sought to reestablish the four settlements Ariel Sharon evacuated a generation ago, effectively messaging to the Jenin Governorate that a decade of stability was meaningless." https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3837286-israelis-missed-an-opportunity-again/
This is just one example. Netanyahu's bromance with Trump is full of examples - most notably moving the US embassy to contested Jerusalem and the Abrahamic Accords which by design excluded Palestinians from discussion of their own future.
Gaza is Netanyahu's Gotterdammerung. It is everybody else's tragedy. We should all protest.
Your statement is admirable, at least in the beginning, but Zionism has always been genocidal, even as it was practiced by the Puritans who came to Turtle Island in the 17th century to slaughter Native Americans and steal their land. That genocide is also ongoing because that land has not been returned to its proper owners. (It even inspired the Nazis, as explored in many academic texts, for instance "Hitler's American Model.")
The struggle is the same in Palestine. Netanyahu is just a scapegoat, and if he is dethroned, he will just be replaced with some other equally bloodthirsty American imperialist puppet. As for the so-called "terrorism" of Hamas, people have a legal right to violently resist their own extermination. Palestinians have undertaken peaceful protests before—and the Zionist entity responded by mowing them down by the hundreds with the same machine guns which are brought into American schools to terrorize American children. Before 10/7, 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinian children in a decade. "Whoever is in solidarity with our corpses but not our rockets is a hypocrite and not one of us."
To both-sides genocide is not a good look. Civilians perished during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising—and imagine both-sidesing the Holocaust! Yet liberals are against every war except the current war, and in favor of every civil rights movement except the current one. The Zionist entity is an outpost of Western imperialism, a genocidal project from day one, and has nothing to do with Judaism. I say this as a Jew.
Let it suffice to say. You are grievously mistaken. In your assertions and your rhetoric. Lies obstruct the cause of justice and mercy. Irrational habits of mind undermine coming to consensus through the reasoned debate of empirical evidence.
So proud and impressed! Go COA
Lot of pup tents but where are the actual protestors?
It’s nothing more than a virtue signal. Plus, it’s a little chilly out. They’re probably all cozy in their dorm rooms.
For people who sold their souls to Mammon a long time ago, it's difficult to believe that others might risk their lives and careers to help people whom they have never met.
Exactly who has lost their soul to mammon in this scenario and what are COA students risking right now by setting up a tent on a cozy campus on the ocean in Maine?
"Lot of pup tents but where are the actual protestors?"
The physical encampment itself is a statement of protest and solidarity.
Robin Givhan has a profoundly insightful essay on tents as signifiers. I quote the beginning and end below. There is a link to the entire essay.
"It’s been a long time since a tent was simply a tent. Today, it almost certainly represents an issue, a problem, a population with which society would prefer not to contend.
. . . The tents shame countries, cities and individuals for their failures even when the voices of the activists fall silent, when the chanting stops and the sun sets. The tents are still there . . . . [to] remind us of inequality, of the unpredictability of unfairness, of the ways in which capitalism and the American Dream don’t work. They represent one immoral truth out of many. And whether leaders criminalize them, bulldoze them or ridicule them doesn’t matter. The problems endure because the problem is never the tent."
-Robin Givhan
"America’s tents are pitched on shameful truths" Washington Post
Gift link to essay:
https://wapo.st/3JHXvyP
If the kids at COA truly want to help the people of Gaza they should sell all those expensive tents and send the money to Gaza relief agencies. Until they do that all they are hurting is the lawn under the tents and making the lives of the grounds crew more difficult.
It is not an either/or proposition.
Although they are both necessary - protest is not sufficient, donations are not sufficient. These students are demonstrating solidarity with a wider community while seeking practical local solutions to elements of the larger problem. They are acting responsibly. I expect they will take care of the grass and clean up after themselves.
Call me cynical if you wish but having covered antiwar campus activism as a photojournalist in the 60s and 70s I find a dozen empty pup tents on the lawn and a set of politeness rules by a college president a bit on the tepid side when it comes to opposing genocide in Gaza. Someone earlier suggested virtue signaling as the goal…could be I suppose.
At SUNY-Binghamton there were two anti-war protest groups. One group would go through the school buildings and ask the classes to take a vote on whether to join teach-ins out on the lawn. The other group would go through, and march around the buildings, yelling through bullhorns to disrupt the classes. I guess you might call the first tepid. But the point is you don't need drama and violent conflict to make a point about the human wreckage of war. That I think is the brilliance of the tent encampments. They quietly signify solidarity. Which in itself is important. Both the quiet and the solidarity. And they present the question - 'what can we do here.' Important in itself. The students are keeping it local - to see how they might put some distance between COA and militarism. If in fact COA has such ties. Learning that is another benefit of the protest.
I have never advocated nor approved "violence" as a tactic on campus or off. Having seen students bayoneted for opposing the invasion of Cambodia I know only too well the perils of mass crowd psychosis. At the same time I tend to judge the sincerity of political advocacy groups by the amount they invest of themselves in their cause. Setting up expensive camping tents on lawns might be an okay first step to opposing genocide in Gaza but I eagerly await 2nd, 3rd, and 4th steps as proof of something more substantial than virtue signaling. In the meantime selling those expensive tents and donating the money to Gaza support efforts would make a great second step!
I must have missed the part where the protesters asked for Hamas to release the Israeli hostages.
#FCOA
Given that Biden and all the Republicans and Democrats have executed, via their proxy Netanyahu and the Zionist entity, tens of thousands of children in Gaza—given that Palestine itself has been held hostage by Western imperialism since 1922—given that there are currently 123 hostages currently held by Hamas—given that Netanyahu has stated that he will invade Rafah regardless of whether the hostages are returned—given that you doubtless subscribe to the idea that all lives matter—shouldn't more than 99% of your concern be for the Palestinian people? It's such a wonder how liberals, Nazis, and reasonable moderates all believe that history began on October 7th, and time itself did not exist before then!
Who are the “Nazis” in your diatribe?
The COA protestors' demands are constrained to the COA community. The students are asking to work with college administrators - to investigate, spotlight, and take responsible action to mitigate injustice. Locally. That is very much in keeping with the ethos of COA.