Columbia University student organizers set up the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on April 17, 2024. (Photo: social media)
On January 20, Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. As the country reels from his inauguration and the sweeping executive orders of his first week in office, American progressives are left grappling with the implications of a new Trump Administration, and how our organizing projects might come under renewed assault by a hard right Republican trifecta that controls both houses of Congress and is well positioned to enact its legislative agenda.
Many organizations are rightfully concerned about the repression and lawfare that Trump’s return to the White House threatens. As the left stands in a defensive posture, the Palestinian solidarity movement and its university student organizers — in Trump’s line of sight for his first offensives against civil society — leads the way.
Nimble as circumstances require
For university student organizers and the campus coalitions that initiated nationwide solidarity encampments this spring, steep university repression — the bending of rules around public space and assembly — are not new, and a mere precursor to the looming repression of Trump’s second term. In the aftermath of numerous agreements that ended many encampments peacefully, students returned to campuses this fall to universities that had utilized the summer term to prepare for their arrival, and put in place new institutional obstacles to public assembly and protest.
At Columbia University, 116th Street, which is a crucial pedestrian thoroughfare for Harlem residents and transit commuters, has been closed to public access as the university has paralyzed the campus under a tight shutdown since April. An October 7 walkout, which drew hundreds of students, was met by the implementation of strict, 7:00PM curfews for several days, with all academic buildings closed to student access. Nevertheless, student organizers adapted, holding a number of large protest actions over the duration of the fall semester.
For the second year in a row, student groups descended on the university’s annual December 6 Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, engaging in a coordinated disruption of the festivities. In anticipation of a protest action, university administrators moved the event from 7:00PM to 6:00PM, and cancelled the lineup of student performances. Organizers pivoted, dispersing into the crowd and handing out literature before convening after the ceremony, gathering a large mass of people and shutting off the lights.
After organizers circulated plans to hold a December 9 rally on the lawns of Barnard College, administrators announced an unprecedented escalation of campus closure guidelines, specifying that Columbia students would not be permitted onto Barnard’s campus unless there for a class, and further announcing that security officers would implement random security checks, where students would be required to provide their bags for inspection and submit to an identification. Instagram later suspended the account for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), but students were undeterred, amassing hundreds in a picket outside Barnard gates in pouring rain, and later successfully recovering the CUAD account. Other student organizations lent use of their platforms to ensure organizers could still reach the student body.
We keep us safe
As protest actions have accelerated under escalating university repression, students have been forced to build substantial infrastructure for protest safety. While programs like the National Lawyers Guild’s Legal Observer initiative have remained mainstays for protest movements for years, campus coalitions have become reliable faces at larger solidarity actions, with many students being trained to marshal protests or liaise with police. With Trump back in office, and promising to invoke the National Guard against dissident organizations, rebuilding our protest safety infrastructure through programs like the Democratic Socialists of America’s Red Rabbits grouping will be critical. Organizations across the left must also build their ability to spontaneously de-arrest, as students have been forced to do at both the encampments and at other large gatherings, such as the Labor Notes conference.
Navigating repression at our schools and workplaces, as the right-wing is emboldened to attack activists with a favorable government at their back, will also be crucial. At Columbia, CUAD organizers pioneered a Collective Defense initiative, where students who face disciplinary notices from administration can receive support from a team of individuals equipped to explain what potential violations constitute and how they can defend themselves. For students who are at particularly high risk in the event of suspension or arrest, Collective Defense can help them assess the potential repercussions of involvement in a given action. Replicating these structures within our unions, workplaces, and elsewhere, where we are particularly vulnerable for our political work, will be crucial over the next four years.
The Canadian and American governments blacklisting the Samidoun prisoner network for their Palestinian solidarity work echoes the impending persecution of civil society by the Trump Administration, empowered by the so-called ‘nonprofit killer bill’. Trump has also been transparent about how he intends to employ lawfare against leftists and pro-Palestine activists — employing programs like the Foreign Agents Registration Act, accelerating surveillance, counter-insurgency, and deterring members of the public from getting organized for fear of retribution.
Hundreds of students across the country have already been targeted for suspension or expulsion from their universities, and many institutions have only escalated these tactics this semester. At Cornell University, several organizers, including the Young Democratic Socialists of America’s Atakan Derivan, were banned from their campus for three years, effectively putting their status on hold. Activists should anticipate more extensive litigation under Trump, and be better prepared to navigate court proceedings whenever they arise. The arrest of three pro-Palestine activists in Merrimack for a protest of an Elbit Systems facility is only the beginning.
Collective liberation
We know that the movement for Palestinian liberation on college campuses is deeply intertwined with the nation’s other social movements, such as the fight for migrant justice. Cornell student Momodou Taal was threatened with the loss of his F-1 visa and subsequent deportation for helping disrupt a campus career fair over the inclusion of companies complicit in the Gaza genocide, such as Boeing. As visa holders come under threat by Trump and his Cabinet nominees, international students will be the first group targeted.
Many institutions, such as the University of Maryland, asked international students to return to the United States prior to Trump’s inauguration, as students reel from the prospect of new guidelines that could threaten their status in the country. In 2017, airports were flooded with volunteers ready to support people detained by immigration authorities in the days after Trump’s first inauguration. This time around, mass ICE raids have already begun, and heightened uncertainty around legal status for students remains.
As the spring semester begins, campus coalitions are preparing to organize feverishly for their members if need be, and this work should also provide a model for the necessary migrant justice work undertaken by the left in the years ahead. This year, it may be Middle Eastern university students, targeted for their pro-Palestine advocacy, that are the first to be unfairly detained at ports of entry, and we must be prepared to assertively defend them.
Across the progressive left, organizers engaged in abolition, environmental justice, labor, and mutual aid work, amongst a litany of social movements, are watching apprehensively as Trump re-enters the White House with the full force of the federal government behind him. As we plan ahead for the next four years, we should look to those on the front lines, and follow the blueprint set by the student organizers of the movement for Palestinian liberation.