Dear friends,
I’ve been sitting with some news from last week in order to process it: it turns out that NYC’s mayor was not merely responding to calls from Columbia University to arrest students protesting the war in Gaza, but was begging to be asked.
The heavy police response, which included flash-bang grenades and siege vehicles against nonviolent student protesters, was the result of a campaign
[by] a loose coalition of millionaires, billionaires, and other titans of commerce and industry who felt that the student activism taking place at Columbia was not doing anything good for the interests of the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
This group got a Zoom meeting with the mayor, and there seem to have been large donations to the mayor’s 2025 re-election committee. In addition, WhatsApp texts indicate that real estate investor Joseph Sitt told his fellow fat cats that the mayor was
"open to any ideas we have," a day after the call. "As you saw he’s ok if we hire private investigators to then have his police force intel team work with them."
This is troubling on so many levels. There is the corruption, because the Adams administration was apparently acting on behalf of donors.
The police action came after a series of behind-the-scenes discussions where Mr. Adams and police officials tried to persuade university leaders that it was time for them to intervene. A top police official, Kaz Daughtry, said on Wednesday that the arrests came after “we were finally given permission.”
And then, there is the likelihood of more costly lawsuits over NYPD’s wrongful arrests and excessive use of force against protesters. This is particularly galling given the budget cuts that some city agencies are facing.
Between mid-April and May 8, the police arrested more than 600 people involved in anti-war protests on and near campuses in NYC. Many of the charges have been dropped, although dozens of people who were arrested in barricaded buildings on the City College and Columbia campuses still face charges.
“No charges stuck, so it really does just seem like NYU was using the NYPD as a way to intimidate protesters,” said Zach Samalin, an assistant professor of English who was visiting the student encampment with his family on the evening of April 22 when he was arrested and charged with trespassing and spent hours in jail.
I have been fascinated by NYU’s response to student protests. The students have been required to write essays to reflect on their actions.
As a huge fan of teachable moments, I am usually in favor of giving people a chance to reflect on and express their views. NYU’s assignment has a different character, however; it is writing-as-punishment.
Sara Pursley, an associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, noted that students completing the reflection paper are told they must not try to justify their actions or “challenge a conduct regulation.”
“Since they can’t write anything justifying their action, students seem to be banned from writing about personal values that might be relevant here, such as a belief in freedom of expression, the responsibility to oppose genocide, or the duty of nonviolent civil disobedience under certain circumstances,” Pursley said. “This seems rather ironic in an essay on integrity.”
I was reading on an altogether different topic — the way that fossil fuel corporations are trying to refute climate regulations as a violation of their free speech — when I came across a reference to the
compelled-speech principle in the First Amendment, which states that the government cannot force people to say something they disagree with.
As I was unfamiliar with this, I followed a link to an excerpt from a Supreme Court ruling in a 1943 decision:
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
NYU’s leadership is not official — the amendments protect against infringement of rights by officials of the government — but it has been petty.
contradicting the university’s “ethical and intellectual standards.”
Today, the university’s Office of Student Conduct announced that it will consider ways of improving the assignments which were imposed on student protesters who were arrested at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
The assignments are certainly not the most odious thing going on. Since Israel began its ground invasion into Rafah, a lack of supplies and security has undermined humanitarian efforts in Gaza, where conditions are worsening.
The ongoing fighting means that both Kerem Shalom and Rafah are effectively blocked, and perishable food and medicine is piling up on the Egyptian side of the border. Egypt and Israel have traded blame over a failure to negotiate Rafah’s reopening, which has also prevented sick and injured Palestinians from leaving the strip for treatment elsewhere.
Donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which is providing food, launching a mental health program, and opening a field hospital in Gaza.
US policy has contributed to the conditions that are destroying a people.
anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” when up to 900,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and displaced in 1948 during the founding of Israel. In her resignation letter, she wrote, “Nakba and Shoah, the Hebrew word for Holocaust, mean the same thing: catastrophe. I reject the premise that one people’s salvation must come at another’s destruction. I am committed to creating a world where this does not happen — and this cannot be done from within the Biden administration.”
Greenberg Call resigned before the International Criminal Court accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and others of war crimes and before Biden denounced the chief prosecutor of the world’s top war crimes court for seeking arrest warrants.
Human rights advocates criticized Biden's suggestion that the ICC's announcement equated Israel with Hamas, while some also accused the U.S. of double standards, given Washington's emphatic support for the ICC's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes in the war in Ukraine.
We’re in the midst of a rule-of-law moment here in the US. Implicit in maintaining the rule of law is the unbiased application of the law to all parties.
Tell the Biden Administration: DON’T sanction the ICC! This quick action is from Justice Democrats.
The fate of folks seeking asylum in the US is caught up in a political moment; the Biden administration is under pressure to reduce immigration. A proposed rule threatens the right of people to seek asylum:
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) proposal aims to reduce the use of the U.S. government’s resources on individuals who would otherwise be ineligible for asylum or withholding of removal. It would apply to asylum seekers subject to expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process where low-level immigration officers can summarily remove certain noncitizens without a hearing.
It is extremely difficult to prove that one is not a threat. People rejected for asylum must have the opportunity to plead their case before an immigration judge.
Submit a comment to DHS about changes to the asylum process.
Beginning yesterday, New York City began enforcing a new rule to limit shelter stays for migrants. The 30-day limit affects migrants without young children. There is a 60-day limit for single adults, age 18-23.
The city shelter system currently houses about 65,000 migrants, but many of those are families with kids.
“Our concern is people will be denied for reasons that could be appealed or because of some error or because they didn’t have all the documentation required,” said David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless. “We’re watching very carefully to see if that happens because nobody in need of shelter in New York City should ever be relegated to sleeping on the streets.”
Tell Mayor Adams that it’s wrong to create more chaos in the lives of newly-arrived migrants.
Every day, there are good people working to provide legal and survival services to the newest New Yorkers.
Support Make the Road NY, which also provides transformative education, community organizing and innovative policy work to build power and fight discrimination and poverty.
with love,
L