Some 3,200 people were arrested this spring during a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments protesting the war in Gaza. While some colleges ended demonstrations by striking deals with the students, or simply waited them out, others called in police when protesters refused to leave.
Many students have already seen those charges dismissed. But the cases have yet to be resolved for hundreds of people at campuses that saw the highest number of arrests, according to an analysis of data gathered by The Associated Press and partner newsrooms.
Along with the legal limbo, those students face uncertainty in their academic careers. Some remain steadfast, saying they would have made the same decisions to protest even if they had known the consequences. Others have struggled with the aftermath of the arrests, harboring doubts about whether to stay enrolled in college at all.
Maybe they should have listened to the wisdom of an earlier generation, where everyone understood the meaning of "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime." Those kids were engaged in illegal acts for whatever reason, good or ill, and when told to "knock that shit off or suffer the consequences" chose Option B.
And now, they're whining about it. Poor babies. Their parents and grandparents stood up against evil shit and many got their heads cracked or went to jail, proudly, for what they believed in. Some of them died as martyrs for their cause. All of them knew full well what they were getting themselves into.
But these kids? Not so much. They're upset that they're being held to account for protesting, for violating the law and the rules of their schools. They seem to think that they should be privileged to misbehave and waltz away. (You know, like the COFF.)
Sorry, kids. You did the crime, now do the time.
3 comments:
Do stupid things, win stupid prizes, still holds.
And they still persist.
Eck!
Except that's not how it works, and you darn well know it. Police issue an announcement that something is an "illegal assembly", then immediately kettle and arrest everybody who is at the protest without giving them any chance to leave. I've seen that playbook at demonstrations for pretty much every cause under the books, whether it was protesters protesting that cops shouldn't just execute unarmed people, protesters protesting that Wall Street has hollowed out our economy, and yes, protesters saying that Israel has killed innocent civilians and should be more careful about who they're killing as they attempt to deal with the terrorists who took Israeli lives.
The United States is, in many ways, a big-ass police state where the police can do anything they feel like doing with few repercussions other than a paid vacation. The few cases where individual police officers actually get singled out and charged with violating people's Constitutional rights are so rare that they are front page news. Behind the scenes, police officers violate people's Constitutional rights every day, to the point where the City of New York has paid out over $1B in lawsuit settlements over the past year to resolve lawsuits where their officers violated people's Constitutional rights... and every one of those officers is still on the beat, still violating people's rights.
I don't know what the exact details are in these specific cases, but given how many police officers regularly violate people's Constitutional rights (as the lawsuit settlements show), I'm not going to bet on the police officers being in the right here. Just sayin'. 'Cause even a blind penguin can see that in a police state, arrested demonstrators might not always be the bad guys.
This is probably behind a Times paywall that I don’t know how to evade. Randy Kehler died recently. He protested the Viet Nam war, later he refused to pay his federal taxes. This led to the feds taking his house and Randy spending some time in jail. His first stint was for mailing his draft card back to the draft board. Ellsberg heard Randy give a talk, which inspired him to release the Pentagon Papers. “No Kehler no Pentagon Papers,” Ellsberg said often. There’s talking the talk and walking the walk. Randy walked.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/us/politics/randy-kehler-dead.html
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