Camping
It has been almost a month since the first “Solidarity Encampment” was erected by students in the US, and since then, hundreds have sprouted up around the world. In the past few weeks, I have visited local encampments, read many zines on occupying and holding space, watched videos on older student lock-ins and protests, watched in real time the police brutalize and tear gas multiple camps around the nation, and watched as Zionists assaulted people that could have been me or my friends. Watched as college administrators paid crews of cleaners to clean blood off streets where encampments were raided hours prior. One night on the camp, after a few hours of work, I laid on the cold grass and ate some dried mango that someone had donated. I looked up at the night sky and relaxed as I thought of how this was the closest thing to an autonomous zone I had ever been in. an area without police or rules, free food, water, shelter, books, zines, music, daily speakers and teach-ins, a bubble outside of the hellish world that we have created for ourselves, a place where I can act independently and freely without threat of arrest or otherwise. I know now that, just as the thousands that used to protest in the street just a few months prior, these encampments will soon end either by burn out or by forceful removal by the state. I am not a student. I decided long ago that school was not the place for me, or at least not in its current state, but I believe that these students are doing amazing things, risking almost everything to disrupt the system. But with this in mind, we must learn something from the camps we need to adapt to and continue. I can’t help but think that we need to be doing more. Is camping at a university all I can do to stop the war machine? I’ve said this once recently, and I think it’s true: For the Encampments to Continue We Need Continuous and Planned Escalation of Tactics on A Local and National Level. We need more people, especially students, to view universities as adjacent to prisons because they are not far off. Universities are just as violent as police stations and should not be exempt from any tactics of destruction or otherwise. These are places that promise you a good life and job after putting you into incomprehensible amounts of debt and stress all so they can use your money to fund genocide, invest in private stock exchanges, or build cop cities, not to mention the hierarchical system they uphold within campus. We have a fire going, but we need to keep up the pressure from politicians to universities to whoever is at the Met Gala. The only way we can stop them is together, and we need everyone we can get, for all our actions are incendiary and our spark only grows.
I believe that we will win.
-Sylo