Category: Civil Disobedience

The following was a talk given at a May 4, 2024 march in solidarity with Palestine in Olympia, Washington, and updated May  14.

By Peter Bohmer

Student movements have played a major role in radical history and revolutionary struggles.  For example, France in May 1968 began with a student strike and then spread to worker occupation of many factories. They didn’t win their demands although they gained substantial increases in student rights and wages.

On May 4, 1970, 54 years ago from the day of this demonstration, four students were killed at Kent State University for protesting the US invasion of Cambodia by the Ohio National Guard. 

Here are two statements made this week by UCSD faculty and graduate students in response to the use of law enforcement to make arrests and break down a tent encampment in solidarity with the people of Gaza. The faculty call for Chancellor Pradeep Khosla’s immediate resignation.

UCSD Faculty Call for Chancellor’s Resignation

Faculty of the Ethnic Studies department at UC San Diego are outraged at the vicious suppression of students by our administration under the leadership of Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. This morning, May 6, 2024, Chancellor Khosla called on the UCPD, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, and California Highway Patrol in military riot gear to raid an encampment of peaceful demonstrators exercising their free speech

The push back is growing against the UC San Diego administration’s violent crackdown on the peaceful Palestine solidarity encampment on Monday, May 6.

65 people were arrested when UC police, Highway Patrol and County Deputies confronted students and supporters and tore down the tents, placing dozens in zipties.

Also, there are mounting calls for UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla to resign for his role in bringing in law enforcement

By Frank Gormlie

In my book, The May 1970 Rebellion – about the  height of the anti-Vietnam war movement, I discuss “outside agitators.” Here’s an excerpt:

From college administrators, mayors, local politicians and governors to the President of the United States, the real instigators of all the violence and turmoil were the outside agitators, the Weathermen, professional instigators and rioters.

For example, Kentucky Governor Louie Nunn blamed “outside agitators” and “professionals” for the disturbances at the University of Kentucky. At Ohio University Athens and at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, outside agitators were blamed for the violence.

Law enforcement has cleared out the “Gaza Solidarity” encampment at UC San Diego. Dozens of protesters were detained or arrested, according to media reports.

Authorities declared the encampment an unlawful assembly at about 5:45 a.m. and ordered the protesters to leave.

The university announced that there was police activity from North Torrey Pines Road to Interstate 5. Non-essential employees were advised to move to remote operations, while essential employees were directed to report to work as usual, according to UCSD.

1300 Arrests and Calls for National Guard to Deal with Palestinian Protests Echo May 1970 Rebellion and Kent State Murders

Whether I submit to it or not, because I’ve just finished writing a book about the height of the anti-Vietnam war movement over 50 years ago, I am now an expert on the era that brought us the Kent State massacre and the first national student strike of May of 1970.

The reports of up to 1300 arrests nation-wide of pro-Palestinian protesters, up to 2 dozen college campuses undergoing protests, numerous building take-overs and encampments, clashes between police and students, threats to bring in the National Guard and now claims of “outside agitators” — all echo what happened during the high-water mark of the decade long movement against the US wars in Southeast Asia.

New Yorker Magazine

On Sunday afternoon [Feb. 25] outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., 25-year-old Air Force service member Aaron Bushnell placed his phone on the ground to set up a livestream.

He then stood before the embassy gates and lit himself on fire while shouting “Free Palestine” in a horrific protest against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Below is everything we know about Bushnell, who died from his wounds on Sunday night.

Disillusioned by the Vietnam War, he leaked a top-secret history of the conflict, leading to a landmark Supreme Court case

By Harrison Smith and Patricia Sullivan / Washington Post – Reader Supported News / June 19, 2023

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the voluminous, top-secret history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers, a disclosure that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on press freedoms and enraged the Nixon administration,

By Frank Gormlie

For at least an entire generation of Americans, the day May 4, 1970, will always be associated with the shootings of unarmed students by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. Four students were killed – two had nothing to do with the protests, one was an ROTC cadet – and nine others were wounded, including one permanently paralyzed. The shootings will be eternally remembered as a grim stain upon US history.

By Katie Hyson / KPBS / April 25, 2023

Nearly everyone passing through Chicano Park calls out to the park’s cofounder Josephine Talamantez, who squeezes them tight and asks after their families. Highway pillars surround them, covered in colorful murals. From the time of Spanish conquistadors to the present, they depict a single message of Chicano resilience and self-determination: “Aquí estamos y no nos vamos.” “We’re here, and we’re not leaving.”

The space was born from this refusal.

Originally posted Oct. 8, 2011

Having just returned from the Occupy San Diego encampment at Children’s Park with a full 2 hours of sleep under my belt, I wanted to shine a light into the insides of this movement over the last bunch of hours.

We counted 65 tents last night pitched on the grass and a whole lot of campers slept out in the open. Which means at least two hundred spent the night in our instant tent city of protest. Luckily, it didn’t get that cold last night and there was hardly any dew this morning.