TWO HOURS AGO: an incredible photo taken by a ut austin student capturing something deeply poetic in my opinion, a line of state troopers eagerly waiting to arrest student protesters standing just behind a sign that reads "what starts here changes the world. its starts with you and what you do each day."
i think its so funny that alumni from schools like harvard and columbia that were there during the protests in the 60s-80s are expressing support for students currently protesting against the genocide in palestine, and random zionists that were NOT at these protests in the 60s-80s have the never ending audacity to tell these alumni "well thats different, what you protested was good and what they're protesting is bad." as if protesters against the vietnam war and apartheid south africa were not also demonized, arrested, brutalized, and even killed for their activism. history only remembers them fondly after the damage has already been done.
"Here are your tortured poets. All from Mahmoud Darwish to Dr. Refat Alareer to Khaled Juma, these are tortured poets. Tortured by longing for a home they can never return to, tortured by the world they were born to for BEING BORN. Palestine, home to the tortured poets department." [@/folkoftheshelf on X. April 20th, 2024.]
Columbia University students at the Gaza solidarity encampment reading Wisam Rafeedie's The Trinity of Fundamentals and Ghassan Kanafani's The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine (ph. Ian Bartlett).