IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Wanneer: 14/05/2024 - 23:38

Bricks against bulldozers and Smashed screens against genocide

Not perhaps entirely unsurprising, local and national news headlines about the student occupation were again filled with moralising statements about property destruction. Last week it was some bricks that were pulled out of the ground; this week a smashed TV and a broken coffee machine. Little outrage about genocide, no mention almost of the demands made by the students, and a whole lot of crap about respectable ways to protest and how outside agitators and non-students are ruining it for everyone.

Since some weird conspiracies are going around, even in our own circles, about the protestors wearing black being Zionists, we decided it is time to clear up a thing or two and give our perspective. We were there, and we might have even smashed a screen or two.

The threat comes from inside the house (too)

Different news outlets, the CvB, the mayor and the head of Police would like to have you believe that these acts of “vandalism” are done by non-students and that this is a bad thing. A classic example of divide and conquer. So-called experts have come together and decided that a bunch of furniture and construction material thrown on top of each other somehow showed the barricades were made with such ingenuity and professionalism that it couldn’t have possibly be done by students. We are both flattered by this compliment and insulted by the underestimation of our skills. First, we reject the premise that you have to be a student at the UvA in order to participate in these protests. Universities are public institutions and anyone is not only justified to protest the UvA’s complicity in genocide, anyone with a grain of morality should. We encourage everyone to join, but rest assured the threat comes from inside the house too. We are also students inside of the black bloc.

“I am an outside agitator, if not now, I’ll be one later”

There is nothing that radicalises faster than bulldozers and batons. No outside agitator could have done a better job at escalating and growing the resistance than the UvA board and the mayor did. As we watch the situation in Gaza unfold how can we not get angry? As the university refuses to end the complicity in genocide and instead chose violence and repression our hearts ache and our blood boils. Peaceful sit-ins, petitions and respectfully asking didn’t do shit. Disruption and financial damage allows us to speak in a language the CvB understands.

Our anger is justified, our actions don’t come out of nowhere.

When property was damaged at the UvA this wasn’t just a random act of vandalism. When protestors smash tv screens they express their rage against the dehumanisation of the Palestinian people and the lies media has been spreading. When we smash up the offices of the CvB we reject their authority and expel the board from our university. With these actions we say: when there is complicity in genocide, there will be no social peace.

In solidarity with our comrades in prison. For the freedom of Palestine!
Revolution! Intifada!

Some people in black hoodies.