It’s seven o’clock on a rainy Friday afternoon at George Washington University. Dozens of students resist outside this center of knowledge, whose premises remain fenced after the eviction of the hundred shops that had been planted inside since April 25. The spokesperson for the Student Coalition for Palestine (SCP), wearing a keffiyeh around her neck, addresses the media in an improvised press conference to explain the result of her meeting with the rector, Ellen Granberg, who after two weeks has opened up for the first time to “dialogue” with the students.
“There is no dialogue when the administration of this university has applied the most punitive and repressive measures against its own peaceful students. There is no dialogue when in their invitation they reaffirm that they will not consider changes in their investments, which are financing a genocide in Gaza. And there is no dialogue when they allow Zionists and police to tear off the hijabs of their Muslim students with impunity,” he says.
On Wednesday, about twenty officers entered the campus on Granberg’s orders and dismantled the camp set up in its main garden, renamed Shohoada’ Square (Martyrs’ Square), at the renowned Gaza People’s University. 33 people were arrested, including a photojournalist, accused of breaking and entering and attacking authorities. Yesterday, the students set up their tents again and hours later the same scene was repeated.
Today, Martyrs Square has been fenced off, the statue of George Washington no longer sports a kufiya or a Palestinian flag, and dozens of police officers take shifts guarding its surroundings. Despite the general low mood –due to the rain, the eviction and the arrests–, another spokesperson for the SCP conspires to continue on a war footing: “in the face of the brutality of the Zionist State and the American empire, none of us will stop.” until the war in Gaza ends. Those who protested against segregation, against apartheid and against the Vietnam War did the same thing at this university.”
An agent guards the main garden of the renowned “Martyrs’ Square”, fenced off since Friday after two evictions and dozens of arrests.
Since the student uprising over Gaza began, more than 2,800 people have been detained at 63 universities across the country, according to the latest count by The New York Times. In this election year, the situation evokes reminiscences of 1968, when the arrest of 700 students at Columbia University lit the fuse of a fire that would eventually spread throughout American society against the Vietnam War.
The outrage brought down President Lyndon Johnson, who four years ago had escalated the level of US military involvement in Southeast Asia, in a war that at that point already seemed impossible to win and that would end up leaving 58,000 American soldiers dead and 153,000 wounded. . In March, after the New Hampshire primary, Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election.
Five months later, as Democrats prepared to elect their candidate at the National Convention in Chicago, the anti-war movement staged massive demonstrations that were met with police brutality. The candidate chosen at that convention, Hubert Humphrey, would end up defeated in November by Republican Richard Nixon, who had promised to achieve “peace with honor” in Vietnam. The withdrawal of troops would not be formalized until 1973 through a law approved in Congress.
The parallels between the current situation and that of almost six decades ago serve as inspiration for the student movement in Gaza and have been highlighted in numerous press articles, and even by senator and former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who stated that “Gaza can become “Joe Biden’s Vietnam.”
Both uprisings occur in an election year, in a country in which the ideological and generational gap is increasingly evident (especially since Black Lives Matter); both have started at Columbia University, have expanded to other universities in the country, and have been harshly repressed by order of the rectors; and both have an unpopular Democratic president in power and a national convention brewing in Chicago.
However, in 1968 the entire American society was involved in the conflict, since it was their own relatives who were being led to the carnage in the name of containing communism in the world. Although Americans and relatives of the students – many of Arab and Palestinian origin – who are protesting today have also died in the war in Gaza, largely financed by the US government, it is more complicated for it to spread to other sectors of society. , which mostly continues to support sending weapons to Israel.
This is not 1968. If it were, Biden probably would have announced his withdrawal from the election race. And his rival, Donald Trump, would not be calling on Tel Aviv to “finish the job” and criticizing the president for “having abandoned Israel” with his recent decision to delay the shipment of 3,500 bombs for fear of a massacre in Rafah.
And, although Gaza is not Vietnam, it could bring down President Biden, but not by default like Johnson, but at the polls on November 5. Due to the American electoral system, tens of thousands of people in seven key states can decide the result of the elections, which are expected to be at least as disputed as those of 2020. Therefore, the support of young university students was essential for their victory , but it is increasingly less clear that they will revalidate their trust.
The latest poll from the renowned Emerson College indicates that, currently, Trump leads Biden in the seven states considered key: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Although he also reveals that the margin is narrow, between one and five points depending on the state, and there are six months left to redirect the situation.
The scenes we see today at George Washington University have been repeated in educational centers across the country, including these seven swing states, where the undecided – estimated at 6% – are mostly young, a segment of the population that historically shows less sympathy for Democrats and Republicans, and defines itself – at 41%, according to Gallup – as independent. If Biden continues to criminalize protests, maintains arms support for Israel and does not influence his government to put an end to the massacre, which already amounts to 35,000 deaths, it will be difficult for him to win the support of young people and his re-election will be difficult. .
