IT'S GOING DOWN

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with antifascist authors Matthew Lyons and Xtn Alexander of Three Way Fight, who speak about their new book, Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism, published by PM Press. During our interview we cover a lot of ground, from the election cycle, the changing terrain of US empire and hegemony, the limits of neoliberal discourse on “extremism,” the growing movement in solidarity with Palestine, and the state of the US far-Right.

From PM Press on the new book:

What’s the relationship between combating the far right and working for systemic change? What does it mean when fascists intensify racial oppression and patriarchy but also call for the downfall of economic elites or even take up arms against the state?

Three way fight politics confront these urgent questions squarely, arguing that the far right grows out of an oppressive capitalist order but is also in conflict with it in real ways, and that radicals need to combat both. The three way fight approach says we need sharper analysis of far-right movements so we can fight them more effectively, and we also need to track ongoing developments within the ruling class, including liberal or centrist efforts to co-opt antifascism as a tool of state repression and system legitimation.

This book offers an introduction to three way fight politics, with more than thirty essays, position statements, and interviews from the Three Way Fight website and elsewhere, spanning from the antifascist struggles of the 1980s and 1990s to the political upheavals of the twenty-first century. Over fifteen authors explore a range of topics, such as fascist politics’ relationship with patriarchy and settler colonialism, Tom Metzger’s “Third Position” (anticapitalist) fascism, conflict within the business community over the 2016 presidential election, and the Trump administration’s shifting relationship with the organized far right. Many of the writings address issues of political strategy, such as tensions between radicals and liberals within the reproductive rights movement and the George Floyd rebellion, video gaming as an arena of political struggle, and the importance (and challenges) of approaching antifascist organizing in ways that are militant, community based, and nonsectarian.

Lyons and Alexander argue that we need an ever evolving analysis of the challenges before us, as neoliberals continue to turn towards the Right, and the GOP’s open embrace of fascism escalates. Three Way Fight is also on tour to promote their new book, check them out in Philadelphia this month:

More Info: Three Way Fight website, Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism, interview with Three Way Fight on It’s Going Down

Welcome, to This Is America, August 21st, 2024.

In today’s episode, first we speak with the host of 12 Rules for What?, an antifascist podcast on the Channel Zero Network, about the wave of antifascist mobilizations against the far-Right following a series of anti-immigrant riots in the so-called United Kingdom, after the spread of viral misinformation on social media.

We then present the audio version of a new text, The Election Cycle as Counter-Insurgency, and speak with Vicky, author of In Defense of Looting, about their thoughts on the recent election spectacle as the US continues to send billions in weapons and military aid to Israel.

All this and more, but first, let’s get to the news!

Source: Triangle Mutual Aid

The Mutual Aid Disaster Relief network has been busy organizing in the face of flooding and wildfires across the US. Triangle Mutual Aid is also reporting live from South Carolina as the group is organizing on the ground with locals following massive flooding. From a recent update:

…[T]he network of people associated with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR) has been activated. The network of mutual aid groups has a Carolinas group chat populated with people from Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Asheville as well as a couple people in eastern NC closer to the impact zone, several supportive network members from Virginia and others from as far away as Florida. MADR people do an amazing job of coming together and coordinating activities in response to disasters. People collect supplies and organize transport to impacted areas. The national MADR organization has the ability to reimburse expenses and has teams of people knowledgeable in areas like radio communications, 3D printing medical supplies, solar power, and such. Supply drop-off locations have been identified in Greensboro and Raleigh and more are being worked on.

In the bay area, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) held a picket at a bookstore where members of the union are fighting for a raise. In Lansing, several demonstrations were held outside of the homes of executives demanding that they cut ties with the Cop City project. Unicorn Riot also has a new report up about the recent Earth First! gathering in Pennsylvania which brought out around 400 people.

Targeted direct actions continue against the US supported war and genocide in Gaza. In the DC area, the office of AIPAC, one of the largest pro-Israel lobbies, was hit was extensive vandalism and graffiti. More actions took place in Los Angeles, CA, Romulus and Ann Arbor in Michigan, and New York City.

Source: Never Sleep

According to a communique posted to Never Sleep:

More than 15 CitiBankkk locations were sabotaged…across so-called New York City. We jammed the locks and card access readers, sprayed the windows and buildings, and issued warnings in red paint underscoring the company’s investments in genocide: “ABOLISH ISRAEL, FREE PALESTINE” and “THIS IS A WARNING: DEFUND NOW.”

CitiBank facilitates billions in bonds sales for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, which manufacture missiles and fighter jets used by the IOF to kill hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. CitiBank is also the largest U.S. bank operating in the zionist entity and heavily invests in the technology sector there, contributing to the “tech-washing” of apartheid, occupation, and ongoing genocide. From its shameful history in Haiti and apartheid South Africa to financing IOF arms and settlements, CitiBank has long profited from settler colonialism.

According to a report in Cambridge Day, pro-Palestine protests seem to have shut down an office of KMC Systems, “a subsidiary of [the] Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems” which has been made “virtually empty…and there are other signs that the company is leaving the city. The building…that houses KMC has been targeted by pro-Palestinian demonstrations for months.”

As this podcast was being finished, thousands mobilized to march on the DNC and call for a ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel, as the city was flooded with thousands of riot police. On the first day of the DNC, protesters were able to push through one fence, but were quickly shut down by protest marshals and law enforcement, according to a report from Unicorn Riot. Demonstrators also attempted to set up an encampment at a local park, but were ultimately shut down by police. The next night, police clashed with demonstrators outside of the Israeli embassy, as journalists and protesters were arrested. For more coverage, check out It Could Happen Here and live coverage from Unicorn Riot.

Natasha Lennard at the Intercept noted that several “progressive” politicians such as AOC helped to white-wash the Biden administration’s ongoing support for the continued genocide in Gaza, as the Democrats have pushed a platform which calls for greater police and border militarization and Harris has signaled that her administration will not deviate from supporting Israeli apartheid. The Intercept also reported that demonstrators arrested at the DNC “reported injuries from police violence that required hospitalization and a lack of access to attorneys or medication while in custody.”

photo: Unicorn Riot on Mastodon

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, IGD contributor Scott Campbell speaks with Flor, a compa in so-called Mexico actively involved in supporting anarchist political prisoner Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel. They speak about Okupa Che, an autonomous, self-managed space on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a project where Yorch has been a long-term participant. They then talk about the various charges and legal battles Yorch has faced since 2016, his ongoing imprisonment since December 8, 2022, and his recent sentence of seven years and six months. Flor also provides information on how folks can act in solidarity with Yorch and discusses the cases of other political prisoners in Mexico.

For more information about Yorch and Okupa Che, check out the following resources:

Welcome, to This Is America, July 29th, 2024.

In this episode first we present an interview on the case of the Boeing 5 in Ohio, anti-war activists who are facing charges for an action which shut down a Boeing facility for its role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. We then speak with organizers about the upcoming Health Autonomy Convergence happening in Vermont in October. We then launch into a deep dive into Project 2025.

All this and more, but first, let’s get to the news!

Resistance in solidarity with those in occupied Palestine continues. In Arizona:

…clandestine saboteurs struck the Caterpillar facility near…I-10 in Tucson, AZ, in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against ongoing genocide by the Israeli state. The tires of multiple mobile generators were slashed and a message vandalized the facility wall [reading]: “Bulldoze your butts, not Gaza.” Caterpillar has been a supplier of military equipment used by the Israeli state in their campaign of terror and mass death. Saboteurs have targeted Caterpillar at least twice in Tucson this year. More broadly, clandestine sabotage has been one strategy taken by autonomous actors against the global corporations who produce and supply the material means for the unfolding atrocity.

In Montreal:

On the night of July 19th, a demo of pro Palestine militants took the streets of downtown Montreal, targeting the Quebec Deposit and Investment Fund (CDPQ), Scotiabank, and the Google offices. The media has remained completely silent and has not reported on the demo. So as long as the ruling elites fail to deliver justice, they will never get peace.

Meanwhile in Washington DC, thousands mobilized to block streets during far-Right Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s speech in front of Congress, while over the course of three nights, protesters rallied outside of the hotel where Netanyahu was staying. Maggots and other bugs were also released inside the banquet hall where Netanyahu was reportedly dining, video of which quickly went viral online. Police responded with pepper-spray and chemical weapons against crowds of protesters, who “vandalized [a] Christopher Columbus statue…near Union Station” with slogans in support of Palestine and pulled down and burned an American flag. During his speech in front of Congress, which responded with a standing ovation, Netanyahu called for a continuation of the genocide in Gaza and attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the US as terrorists and pushed conspiracy theories that the growing protests were simply the result of Iranian influence and funding.

Across the US, people hit the streets to protest the brutal police murder of Sonya Massey, a 36 year-old mother who was shot and killed in her home while standing next to her stove by a sheriff after calling 911 about a possible prowler.

In Houston, Texas, groups like West Street Recovery, Space City Anarchists and Houston Food Not Bombs have been hard at work providing autonomous disaster relief in the face of hurricane Beryl, which has killed at least 36 people as millions were left without power and air conditioning amidst a record heat wave.

In New York, hundreds gathered to discuss ways to mobilize against a proposed Cop City project in Queens.

Really Free Market in Redlands, CA

In Redlands, CA antifascist parents with Safe Redlands Schools organized a ‘back to school’ Really Really Free Market.

Tree-sit in Lincoln, MA against Enbridge pipeline that threatens a forest.

A tree-sit has been launched in Lincoln, MA against an Enbridge pipeline that threatens a forest. A statement from a tree-siter posted to social media read:

All fossil fuel fights must be anti-militarist. We are not only against these individual projects, but the entire fossil fuel industry and the largest polluter on the planet: the US military. Solidarity to the protesters in Cambridge shutting down Elbit Systems, the Zionest weapons company profiting from the genocide of Palestinians. From the black birch trees of the Lincoln Forest to the Palestinian Olive Groves, glory to all struggling for a free and breathable world.

Police have made several arrests as the tree-sit and other protests remain ongoing.

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizer and historian Steve Ongerth, author of Redwood Uprising: From One Big Union to Earth First! and the Bombing of Judi Bari, about the Earth First! and IWW organizer Judi Bari, who in May of 1990, was almost assassinated in Oakland, CA. Many believe that Bari and another Earth First! organizer, Darryl Cherney, were directly targeted for their organizing in defense of redwood forests in northern California, work that included building alliances with timber workers.

As the website for Redwood Uprising wrote:

Just before 11:55 AM a bomb in Bari’s car exploded, nearly killing her and injuring Cherney. Within minutes the FBI and Oakland Police arrived on the scene and arrested both of them as they were being transported to Highland Hospital. The authorities called them dangerous terrorists and accused the pair of knowingly transporting the bomb for use in some undetermined act of environmental sabotage when it had accidentally detonated. The media spun the event as the arrest of two potentially violent terrorists.

Bari and Cherney were not only Earth First!ers, they were dues paying members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)…Indeed, even some of the timber workers whom the media claimed were the sworn enemies of Earth First! were also members of the IWW and covertly working with Bari and Cherney. There were even a handful of timber workers who had openly declared their alliance with Earth First! and their support of Redwood Summer.

Following the bombing, the FBI and Oakland Police went to desperate lengths to try and “prove” the bombing victims were guilty, even to the point of providing false leads and manufacturing evidence.

During our discussion we speak with Steve about who Judi Bari was, how the IWW and Earth First! began to interact and influence each other in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Redwood Summer campaign that Bari was deeply involved in, the bombing of Bari and Cherney, and Bari’s organizing work that fought to bring together both timber workers and environmentalists.

More Info: Redwood Uprising website and Who Bombed Judi Bari? on YouTube

Welcome, to This Is America, July 8th, 2024.

On today’s episode, we speak first with Josh Fernandez, author of the new book, The Hands That Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist, out now on PM Press.

We then speak with anarchist author and organizer Peter Gelderloos, about the recent debacle and fallout following the so-called Presidential debate, and the draconian rulings from the Supreme Court.

All this and more, but first, let’s get to the news!

On June 29th, angry crowds rallied and occupied a city hall building in Utica, New York, after police shot and killed Nyah Mway, a 13 year-old boy and refugee originally born in Myanmar and a member of the Karen ethnic community. In a horrific scene reminiscent of Oscar Grant’s grisly execution in Oakland, California in 2009, which kicked off a wave of riots, police could be seen on video stopping Mway in a residential neighborhood, leading to a foot chase. In a video recorded by a community member, three white police officers can be seen chasing Mway down and punching him after which, he collapses. As Mway lied on the ground, one of the police officers chasing him fired a shot into Mway, as horrified community members looked on. In a later press conference, police claimed that the murder was justified due to Mway being found with a “replica GLOCK pellet gun.”

In Hamilton, Ontario, abolitionists held a rally outside of the Barton jail in response to ongoing deaths in custody and horrific conditions inside.

Workers at CounterPulse in the bay area, an art and community space organized a march on the boss announcing their union drive with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Members of the union in the Pacific Northwest also honored the “Wobblies who were lynched or imprisoned following the American Legion’s attack on the IWW hall in…Centralia,” Washington on November 11th, 1919. The Tacoma IWW wrote, “Finally, after two years of effort, the IWW Centralia Monument Committee won the fight to have our 2.5-ton granite and bronze monument in the city park in the heart of Centralia.”

Back in the bay area, the fight against a proposed Cop Campus police training facility continues, with several sabotage actions being claimed on Indybay. One communique which took credit for carrying out targeted vandalism against the office of the contractor involved in the project wrote:

We committed this act as a simple reminder that you will be met with resistance at every step along the path to fullfill the contract to build Cop Campus. You have assests spread throughout the Bay Area, if you value them, you’ll drop the contract. This can be the end, or just the beginning. The choice is yours.

For more updates on the campaign, check out Stop Cop Campus here.

Pride events took place across the so-called US and the world, with antifascist and community defense groups in some areas on hand for security. Many Pride events also saw pro-Palestinian protests and parade disruptions, demanding divestment from corporations involved in Israeli apartheid and genocide.

Actions in solidarity with Palestine continue across so-called North America. In Atlanta, people took to the streets outside of the Presidential debates to denounce the spectacle of two right-wing parties jostling over who was the most draconian monster.

In Florida, solidarity activists wrapped up a week of action against weapons supplier Elbit systems, after organizing protests and home demonstrations. In Boston, a demonstration outside of the home of one CEO also called for divestment from Elibt.

In Eugene, OR, several sabotage actions in solidarity with Palestine took place “during the Olympic Track and Field trials.”

In Brooklyn, New York, according to a post on Palestine Action:

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, four Brooklyn museum executives and board members’ residences were targeted by artists and cultural workers in retaliation against their brutal attack on Palestinians and pro-Palestine protesters on Friday May 31, and their shameless complicity in genocide. Red paint obstructed their doorways, banners and messages were left to remind them that: BLOOD IS ON THEIR HANDS.

Consulates in New York were also targeted with vandalism and graffiti. as was a weapons manufacturer in Novi, Michigan.

Students at California State University Los Angeles, “…occupied, barricaded, and looted the admin building to protest the administration ignoring them. They [used] flipped vehicles…as barricades outside of the admin building where students were occupying. They dispersed before the pigs could arrest anyone…”

Meanwhile in so-called Canada, solidarity protest encampments, building occupations, and riots have popped off in Toronto and Montreal. In Montreal, people organized a solidarity encampment for several months and on June 6th, a campus administration building was also occupied, leading to clashes between riot police and defenders of the occupation.

As a report on Montreal Counter-Info wrote:

Hundreds of police officers were then mobilized to secure the area around the building and allow the police officers inside to intervene and arrest the 13 students trapped inside.

The aggressiveness of the police and their ridiculous effort to arrest a handful of students quickly heated things up. The students on the ground began to prepare for a police dispersal operation. While a small line held the west of the area, the forces converged to the east to hold a line against the massing riot police. Aided by more experienced activists, the students then began to stand in collective defense formations. Shortly afterwards, the police attempted a first charge into the lines. Surprisingly, despite pepper spray, gas, shields and truncheons, the lines held firm. While the bulk of the force seemed to be made up of activists new to street confrontations, the lines withstood a police charge and managed to push back the riot line…Whatever prompted the people gathered there to stand firm, their actions were more than commendable.

As night fell and tension began to mount again, the students abandoned the campus and took to the surrounding streets. The forces of the student intifada learned the language of the riot, bank windows were smashed…every available object to form barricades was used to block access to police vehicles as the students took control of the streets for a few hours.

For more updates, check out Clash MTL on Mastodon.

In Cambridge, MA:

Activists have occupied the Cambridge Democracy Center in order to combat and resist the unilateral decision made by its NGO owners to shutter the space, implicitly in response to community opposition to their permitting Zionist organizations to use it as an organizing space. The DC has been a fixture of movement and political organizing in the city and its loss would be a crucial blow to the progressive ecosystem.

Yesterday morning, courageous militants did just that. They escalated the struggle, seizing control of the building and declaring it the People’s Democracy Center, calling on all of us to stand with them and keep the space alive for future generations of organizers and artists who might call it home. It is our responsibility to answer their call and stand with our comrades.

Finally in Iowa, a fur farm was raided by animal liberationists. According to a communique:

June 20th⁠ All cages were opened, all breeding cards were scattered or destroyed, and perimeter fences were leveled at Schmuecker Fox Farm in Luzerne, Iowa. Anyone can do this, and the summer has just begun…

In this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we again speak with antifascist researchers Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, authors of the new book, Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Anti-Semitism. We discuss how the established order has attacked both the the current anti-war movement in solidarity with Palestine, which includes many anti-Zionist Jews, as anti-Semitic, while continuing to push anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, as the Republican party makes concrete alliances with actual neo-Nazis.

Finally, we touch on the need for continued antifascist mobilization and education, pushing back against conspiracy theories, and the current terrain of rising authoritarianism. With a growing number of anti-Zionist Jews coming under attack by both the State and pro-Zionist forces, as white nationalists continue to make inroads into the MAGA movement and Republican party, having a clear understanding and analysis of anti-Semitism is needed now more than ever.

More Info: Shane Burley on the It’s Going Down podcast here, here, here, here, and here. Ben Lorber on the It’s Going Down podcast here.

photo: Dave Id via Indybay, Cindy Milstein and Out Live Them NYC

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with folks across the so-called United States about the ongoing movement in solidarity with Palestine continuing to expand across college campuses.

First, we speak with someone in Austin, Texas, who discusses the explosive protests at UT Austin which were repressed by a phalanx of police. We talk about how anti-authoritarians intervened in the struggle, pushed back against repression and counter-insurgency, and are continuing their organizing in solidarity with Palestine.

Next, we talk with someone on the picket lines at University of California Santa Cruz, one of the campuses hit by a recent strike by tens of thousands of student-workers in solidarity with students facing police repression. We talk about the strike, its role in the growing struggle, and how it spread across various campuses. Since this interview took place, a California judge has ruled in favor of UC bureaucrats, granting a restraining order against the strike as “threats of wildcat strikes by rank-and-file workers forced the UAW to expand the strike.”

Lastly we speak with Mohamed Abdou, author of Anarchism and Islam, and until recently, a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Abdou speaks at length about the role of faculty in the struggle and being targeted under recent hearings aimed at snuffing out pro-Palestinian organizing on campus and being labeled “anti-Semitic” and “pro-Hamas” by right-wing outlets and pro-war grifters.

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with Andrew Lee, an organizer and author of the new book out from AK Press, Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War.

During our discussion, we speak with Lee about how elites, capitalists, and city bureaucrats are banking on gentrification and how people are pushing back against displacement. We also discuss the crisis of rising rents, how gentrification is tied to a push to better police the poor and communities of color, growing attacks on the houseless, and the tenant union movement.

From the AK Press website:

Cities around the world are in the midst of a profound transformation as the wealthy price out the remnants of the urban working class, especially people of color. Displacement is neither accidental or inevitable. It happens because a whole range of people and institutions profit handsomely. Defying Displacement, focused on the US but informed by global examples, investigates gentrification from the perspective of the people fighting it, members of communities whose survival is threatened by some of the most powerful institutions on the planet. Andrew Lee names the names and identifies the actual state and corporate forces that work together to enrich a very specific group of people: property developers and real estate investors who make a killing, politicians who watch their tax bases grow, banks that write profitable loans for new businesses and mortgages for new homeowners. Meanwhile, business districts are planned, tax abatements unveiled, redevelopment schemes dreamed up, corporate and university campuses expanded, and ordinary people are driven from their homes.

The city has long served as the stage for political life and popular revolt. As mass displacement alters the composition of gentrifying cities, the avenues available for social change become unsettled as well, forcing us to reimagine our strategies for building a better world. Around the world communities are pushing the struggle against forced displacement in new directions, shutting down developments and evictions and bringing cities to a halt, fighting militarized police and the most powerful companies in the world. Activists and residents in struggle—dozens of whom are interviewed by Lee to inform his work—are charting the way forward to affordable and sustainable cities run by the people who inhabit them.

For more writings from Lee, go here. Music from The Last Gang.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Photo by Shay Horse

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we are joined with a guest who discusses the mass mobilization to defend the Palestine Solidarity Encampment at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA, which was attacked by far-Right Zionists on April 30th and then by hundreds of riot police on May 1st, who made over 200 violent arrests.

During our discussion, our guest breaks down how the UCLA encampment grew in the face on continued harassment and attacks from far-Right pro-Israel counter-protesters. These attacks escalated on April 30th, when a group of Zionists attacked barricades erected around the outside of the encampment, in full view of security and police, who left the area and watched the attack. As people defended themselves from violent counter-demonstrators, clashes escalated, lasting into the early morning. The next day, police then used the attack as a context for carrying out a violent raid of the encampment, shooting and injuring students and community members with projectile weapons.

As the New York Times wrote:

[An] examination of more than 100 videos from clashes at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that violence ebbed and flowed for nearly five hours, mostly with little or no police intervention. The violence had been instigated by dozens of [far-Right Zionists] who are seen in videos counterprotesting the encampment.

The videos showed counterprotesters attacking students in the pro-Palestinian encampment for several hours, including beating them with sticks, using chemical sprays and launching fireworks as weapons. As of Friday, no arrests had been made in connection with the attack.

The melee began when a group of counterprotesters started tearing away metal barriers that had been in place to cordon off pro-Palestinian protesters. Hours earlier, U.C.L.A. officials had declared the encampment illegal.

Security personnel hired by the university are seen in yellow vests standing to the side throughout the incident. A university spokesperson declined to comment on the security staff’s response.

Police shoot off riot shotguns at UCLA encampment.

TruthOut reported:

Los Angeles Times higher education journalist Teresa Watanabe reported that members of the pro-Israel mob used explicitly genocidal language as they ripped down encampment barriers, yelling, “Second Nakba!” — a reference to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948.

“For over seven hours, Zionist aggressors hurled gas canisters, sprayed pepper spray, and threw fireworks and bricks into our encampment,” organizers said. “They broke our barriers repeatedly, clearly in an attempt to kill our community.”

“Law enforcement simply stood at the edge of the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help,” the statement continued. “The only means of protection we had was each other. We keep each other safe.”

The Daily Bruin, which had student reporters on the scene, reported that “security and UCPD both retreated as pro-Israel counter-protesters and other groups attacked protesters in the encampment.”

As we cover on the podcast, the far-Right Zionist and police violence on full display at UCLA exposes the false claims by the Biden administration and campus leaders across the country; growing police repression of campus demonstrations is aimed at crushing the anti-war movement which threatens US military interests, not to “protect students” or ensure their “safety.”

The successful mass defense of the UCLA encampment from the far-Right is a turning point for the movement. As one person posted on social media following the clashes, “Everyone at UCLA should feel incredibly proud of themselves. Fighting the cops is where all our movements will have to go, and they’re correct to do it and brave to face it.” Another account added, “There were thousands of people at UCLA who didn’t back down and battled to defend the camp. We will never forget what that night was like. So many people came out in solidarity.” Throughout our discussion, we talk about the dynamics on the ground, the various forces at play, and where the movement might go next.

Music: No$hu, “The Bonk Song”