Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Hi, folks. Dick Flax here with another episode of Talking Strategy, making history. And this time we've got a particular pleasure and opportunity. Our guest is Rosie. She's an active participant, kind of media representative for the students right now conducting an encampment in pro palestinian justice movement encampment at UC Santa Barbara. They've been out there for really almost a couple of weeks, and it's a great opportunity, we hope, for a full frank, an interesting discussion with a student who's decided to devote her time, her energy, her life right now to this struggle. So let's tune into that. Maybe just to begin with. The sort of obvious point is, how is it that you got involved in this?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah, so I got involved because I was overwhelmingly upset by the state of the world, and I wanted to do something about it. I have been covering the conflict in Palestine on a radio show that I have at the school's radio station, KCSB, since winter quarter, so since January. And what that show includes is a lot of examining history and archival audio and bringing it into the present through interviews and my own research. And the more you examine the conflict, or at least the more I examined the conflict, the clearer it became that what was going on was, like the worst, or one of the worst human rights crises that I've ever witnessed. And it became increasingly clear that my country was a very, very large part of that human rights crisis. And I would get up, listen to democracy now almost every day, get super upset about it. And I was just. I wasn't an organizer. I was a reporter, but I was waiting on the organizers to do something, and they did. And so I decided to join. And I guess I've sort of become an organizer since the encampment started.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Great.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: And so is this the, like, the first, would you say, the first issue or mobilization that you've been involved with? Obviously, you've been interested in the state of the world and what was going on, but it's the first time you've taken action.
Somebody's taken action, it sounds like.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think that this is my first time taking action. Last year, when the grad students were on strike, I helped with Garner undergraduate support for that. I was on the picket line a lot.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: Awesome. Thank you.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: That wasn't my. I wasn't organizing that. I was just sort of there to support. So when it comes to organizing a protest, I would say this is a unique experience. This is my first time doing something like this.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: And have you been sleeping out and in the encampment?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I've slept out almost every single day, and it's not great for my back because I was not about to drop $100 on a sleeping pad. But I have been camping out almost every night.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: And that started in early May, right? May 1, or around that time, to my knowledge.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: It started on the May. That was not last week but the week before or the Wednesday. That was the week.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's almost two. Almost two weeks now.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: So there are a lot of questions we could ask about that. I mean, how do you. How do you feel it's been going in terms of impact on the campus?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that it's been kind of hard to gauge. I think we've had a couple actions that didn't get very much attention. But then, on the other hand, our Instagram releases, press releases about our interactions with the administration, and those have gotten a ton of reposts, a ton of likes, a ton of comments.
So it seems like the students at least have a feeling of support towards the encampment, regardless of how much they get involved. And then when it comes to the administration, we've gotten attention from the administration. But from my perspective, the negotiation that we've gotten with them is pretty surface level and performative. They've kind of come to, as diplomats or just people to kind of pacify us. They've come and said, oh, we respect your dedication, but it's not my job to do anything about your demands. It's these people's job. So when it comes to administration, we've gotten recognition. We've spoken with them. But as far as I know, no legitimate discussions about meeting demands have been had. But I do know that people are working towards communicating with administration to make that happen. And so I don't know how much of it is on part of the administration or how much of it is on part of us wanting our emails to be perfectly worded before we send them off. And that that's causing a little bit of a lag.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Well, I think between us here on this podcast, we'll get back into the possible outcomes. Like the key demand has to do with UC divestment and how that might work and how. What that really looks like.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Right. And that's important. I just want to underline that.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: That we're talking about a movement with specific demands. Yes.
In solidarity with the. With people in Palestine with the cause of ending the war, but, you know, with.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: But.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: But aimed at an institution that is tied to, complicit in or could at least symbolically, you know, lessen the harm that is going on, and then you're making demands to that end. I just feel like that often gets missed in the discussion about it. It's like as if the demands are a final, definitive, long term solution. Oh, they're wrong terms, but, you know, some kind of like, permanent settlement of the israeli palestinian conflict, and they're going to stay in the lawn until that they get their way. And that's not what's going on. There's something a lot more strategic and a path of political power for young people that is well trod historically. Right, and let's talk about that. There's a connection between your work as an archivist and how at least you've been thinking about your participation and the tactics of the movement or the issue itself. You were talking about that earlier. I'd love to hear you expound on that.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: I think I can talk about how my work in archives has really impassioned me. I guess I think the thing that I kept thinking is that nothing has ever been enough. Nothing that I've done on my show has ever been enough. Nothing that people in the past have done has ever been enough. And not to place the blame on individuals that are trying to do good, because I think they're very powerful entities that even if people are doing as much as they physically can make it, not enough. So that's not to place blame on any. On any individual organizer or whatever, but through the archives, I guess I've both been exposed to successful university activism here at UCSB, specifically through the black students takeover of North Hall. I actually speak with the three remaining members who engaged in that actual, sort of regularly. And I'm actually making a documentary about it right now. So that's. That's something I'm doing. So that kind of. How do you get people to listen to you? And then I guess the other thing is, I'm also a history major. Like, just this historical understanding of how to organize well is something that I kind of bring with me everywhere that I go. So, yeah, I would say I just look at, you know, the takeover of North hall, the hunger strike for ethnic studies requirements, the boycott of or the divestment from companies who are involved in south african apartheid. And those things working. That's sort of a source of anger because I'm like, it wasn't enough, but it's also a source of hope, because I'm like, well, there are individuals who have done something that worked very good.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: So there's one feature of the current moment in protest here at UCSB, that's somewhat unusual, which is that the encampment was started by people who are, in a way, breaking out of the coalition. You want to explain that briefly? It doesn't. We don't need to dwell on this because I don't think it's that big an issue, but it's something people should understand, that there's really two prongs to the history and development of the movement here.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So here at UCSB, I guess now that the encampment started, we have four primary actors that are trying to make a change with our university's relationship with Israel, Palestine, whatever. So those are SJP students for justice of Palestine, JBP, Jewish Voice for peace, UCSB divest, and now the autonomous encampment. That's called the UCSB liberated zone. So there has been hesitance among the three first mentioned organizations, SJP, JVP and UCSB divest, to engage in an encampment. They did an occupation of the student resource building a few weeks ago now where they expressed solidarity with the encampments by placing tents inside and doing chants and having a day long occupation. But this was nothing near what places like UCLA were doing. And there have been a lot of different reasons that these organizations have said that they're hesitant to do it.
There are definitely people within these organizations that wanted to do an encampment and that have participated in the UCSB liberated zone. But there is no endorsement of the UCSB liberated zone's encampment from SJP, JVP or UCSB divest. They put out a statement saying that they were unaffiliated with the encampment and making that very clear to the public. But they didn't denounce it or endorse it in that statement. So I think chosen to stay neutral on the issue.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: So why would you have broken in effect, or. Or move beyond what the coalition was ready to do? Maybe you could speak not for everyone, but get a sense of why this happened.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So I can speak for myself. I know that students for justice in Palestine has been working very hard to organize and rally support for Palestine all year. And I don't think that the encampment would be as big as it is if they hadn't been doing that work. However, I personally, again, kind of going back to this idea of it's not enough. Didn't feel like our campus was engaging in activism. That was enough to persuade administrators. I didn't think that staying in the student resource building for about 7 hours for a day was going to persuade Chancellor Yang or anybody else to do anything or to start negotiations, let alone be inclined to listen to us within those negotiations. So I think a lot of the people who organized the encampment had similar feelings to me, that we needed to do something more drastic that was going to piss off the administration, was going to challenge them in some way to force them to listen to us, when throughout this year, they've either ignored pro palestinian organizing or they've worked to suppress that pro palestinian organizing through various private emails and public decrees. When it comes to these organizations, it's interesting.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: So it was, it was primarily over the strategy for moving the administration or, or even tactics. It's even at the level of sort of tactics of like you're both trying to move the same needle with the administration, get real, real talk about your goals of divestment, and you felt like you needed more leverage. Is that, is that fair or no?
[00:12:34] Speaker B: That is how I feel personally, or how I felt personally.
And whether or not this encampment is giving us the leverage that we need is an entirely other story. But I think that it was definitely a step up from what was happening.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Well, so I've been trying to be immersed because it's something I'm almost obsessed with, with the national portrayal of the student movement. Now, I've spent a lot of my life as an activist and as a sociologist in understanding and studying student movements. So this is the latest episode in that story. And to me, that it's so the word gaslighting has come into vogue, and it's very much the situation now is there's no accepted description of what is happening. There's many different accounts that range enormously over the whole map. So Dirac and I thought, well, we've got to talk to some actual students who are doing something and just see how you talk about a lot of the issues that are on the table, not only talking about why you're protesting, but how you view the whole content of the current debate and conflict in the country and in the world. And Diraka has some very sharp questions he hoping that you will come to grips with. And I think you said you were willing and able to do this. That's the challenge for right now. Do you want to start?
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Okay. Make it sound like it's a game show or something. So there's no prize.
We talked about a little bit about this before we started recording some of the questions that I have. And as Dick said that, I'd say I put it even sharper in terms of the national debate. And this is probably familiar to you, Rosie, I'm sure you're following along, you know, as a media creator yourself. Like the.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Yes, very much.
[00:14:32] Speaker C: It's nuts out there what people are saying, right. There's so much, you know, just outright, like, misinformation propaganda and just, you know, very.
Yeah. Like agenda driven coverage or pseudo coverage. There's like, just word of mouth taken as fact, all kinds of stuff going on.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: And I'm not someone who thinks that there's, like, nothing wrong has ever happened in the palestinian solidarity movement. And it's all made up. It's all, you know, propaganda, blah, blah, blah. Like, I think there are problems. I would like to be able to, like, deal with them, talk about them, engage, fight back against any bad things are going on. Right. Ally with the people that are good, just like in any movement. And it's hard to, like, make sense of what the reality is. There is, I think, some good journalism or piece. Some journalists are trying, like, I've read some good pieces in the LA Times, the Guardian, that, where, you know, people have, like, taken the time to go and talk to actual activists and piece together stories that are contradictory and let them just sort of sit there and, like, two people have different takes on things and not try to, you know, solve it. So good. And also a reframing and least in the California press of, you know, this sort of, like, there's a Gestapo on campus hunting jewish students to, like, there are, you know, an enormous number of, you know, believable, viable, whatever, complaints by jewish students feeling uncomfortable and then unpacking about the why and where and like, how of that. Instead of, yeah. Making just like, putting these stories, images in people's minds. And I think just really poking a trauma wound out there in the community. So that's where I'm coming from, is like, I know that the truth is somewhere or is like, nowhere near that narrative, like the crazy narrative, but I'm sure that there's issues and, and complexities and, and so forth. So, so this is like a safe space to talk about those things, think about them and so forth. So, yeah, go ahead. Or was there anything about that that you want to respond to?
[00:16:52] Speaker B: I'm not sure. I have a lot of thoughts about the media landscape when it comes to the encampments, not only from, from people who are really polarized, but also from kind of the moderate mainstream newspapers who have run an abundance of articles talking about how students have no idea what they're talking about when they ask for divestment. And that these demands are just stupid and there's no way it can ever happen. I've seen articles like that from the New York Times, CB's, NBC. Like, everywhere you can think of, I've seen an article that's like, students are protesting for divestment. Here's what they could really do. And then it's like, students are stupid, blah, blah, blah.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: So I love the ones that also, they're, like, at least researched enough to tell us why all of the other successful divestment campaigns that students have done over the years, why this is totally different. They're like, but this time it's Israel, so forget it.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: And then you see, unfortunately, usually what's seen as more alternative media running articles like, here are seven campuses that have successfully divested. And you're like, well, now you guys look really stupid over there at the New York Times talking about how students don't know anything. But when it comes to coverage at our specific encampment, I can actually tell a story.
We have a big sign that's visible to anybody that walks by that says, globalize the intifada. And this sign has been an issue of contention, kind of. I don't know if it's been a contentious within the camp, but it's been something that we have to be thoughtful about. So a really zionist, like, random lady who has a blog came by and did a little video that was like, this sign is like calling for the annihilation of all jewish people or something along those lines. And then, so that was kind of like the first thing that we heard about it. But she was never, ever going to be on our side. So we're like, okay, whatever. But we have had a couple jewish or israeli students come and say that that sign, like, scares them. So that's been one thing within the camp that we've like, okay, do we take that down? Do we rephrase? I think, I'm not actually sure if it's happened yet, because there's a million signs around there, but I think some, some people wanted to make, rather than taking it down and make a clarifying statement at the bottom saying, we're not calling for the annihilation of israeli people or jewish people at all.
This has, like, a specific meaning within the context of our movement and blah, blah, blah. So I think that while there are people that just want to look at everything that happens at the encampment and say, this is anti semitic, this is hate speech, this is a call of violence, that there's also people that are kind of confused, who might have certain leanings because of their background or their upbringing, who, at least to our encampment, have brought those concerns up. And from my experience, people have taken those concerns seriously. Yeah. So that's what I have to say.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: Well, can I follow. Follow that up as a good sort of jumping in point? Let's. We can start.
So two words that you used in sort of telling that story, and it's interesting to know that there's a controversial banner, and your practice in the encampment is to have debate about it, dialogue, discussion. And so the two words you used in describing that story were intifada and zionist. And you said that someone was very zionist. So what do those words mean to you? And what do you think maybe they mean to your colleagues?
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So the word Zionist is something that I've battled, actually a lot in my understanding of this conflict, because I have a radio show where I talk about Palestine. I have to know, how do I want to talk about the word Zionism? And I've heard multiple interpretations of the term from jewish friends, non jewish friends, whatever. And at first, I was kind of afraid to condemn Zionism because I've heard a lot of people say that Zionism isn't Israel. Zionism isn't the belief in Israel. Zionism is the belief in a jewish state, like, hypothetically and ideally. And on one of my shows, I spoke with a jewish friend of mine who's actually also participating in the encampment. And he presented me with an idea that really made sense. He said it would be great if Zionism was just a theoretical, idealistic place where jewish people could be free from oppression, but that is not how it's manifested in the world today. And so when we think of Zionism in practical terms, we should think of Zionism as people who endorse the existence of the current state of Israel. That doesn't mean you have to endorse Netanyahu or whatever, but the existence of Israel as it stands today. And that made it a lot easier for me to conceptualize Zionism versus anti Zionism, both outside of and within the jewish community, because he went on about his personal story with understanding Zionism, growing up in a fairly zionist environment, and then realizing that that's not an ideology he wanted to associate with. So at this point in time, I think of Zionism as the belief that Israel should exist in the world as it does today. And that is not something that I support as the word that is trying to come to my mind other than killing machine. But that's kind of the phrase that's coming to my mind. There has been an immense amount of violence inflicted on their. On Israelis, I guess you can say, co occupants of. Of the region. And that is not something that I can stand by. And so that is something that I learned from a jewish friend of mine and that I now conceptualize as my understanding of Zionism when it comes to the word intifada. I know that there are historical significances of this.
There's, like, the first intifada and the second intifada, and people feel the way that they will feel about them. I know what they are. I don't know enough about them to say my strong stance publicly. But when people are calling for an intifada within the context of a national or actually global student movement for, like, solidarity with Palestinians, what I think of it as, especially as a banner hanging in the encampment, is that we are embodying the intifada as an uprising at UCSB, and the people who are protesting in Argentina are also embodying that when they protest at their university. So, yeah, that is my understanding of intifada is an uprising against the powers that be that kind of enable what is going on in Palestine to continue. So.
[00:23:52] Speaker C: Wow. Okay. You know that I'm having, like, an aha. Moment that I had not thought of that usage of the term. It's like the way that. Yeah, it's like the way that there was a brief.
I don't want to be dismissive by calling it a fad, but it felt that way to me at the time with zapatismo, after there was the uprising in Mexico in the early 1990s. Like, everyone was a Zapatista, right? And we, like, we were like every. If you were a squeegee kid in Seattle fighting for homeless rights and, like, against police brutality or Zapatista and on and on. There's all this theory about it and so forth. So, again, I'm not holding you accountable for every use of this term in the movement.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: But from your understanding and your encampment and that slogan, it's like, it's this movement you're calling an intifada, which. And is, like, generically speaking, of course, a totally appropriate use of the term in Arabic and resistance and so forth. But you also acknowledge and maybe you're a little shaky on the history and the facts that it was a term that has also been used, sort of, you could say with a capital I for specific moments in history.
And I would say, and I don't want to sound like a dick, but it would be. It's worth, like, knowing or reading up on those moments in history because they are very. They're like. Yeah, they're important for understanding where the, like, where the two communities are at, like, why they are in the kind of conflict they're in at this moment.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I can say that I understand that people who feel allied or loyal to Israel feel like the intifada as it pertains to history. And the usage of the term is calling for a direct attack on Israel because that's what it was. But then I also understand that people that ally themselves with Palestine and feel loyal to Palestine think of it as an act of resistance against a colonial.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Regime, but also a thing that happened, and that's.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: No, yeah, right. Yeah.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: They know it's. Everybody knows that it's a thing that happened in that conversation. Do you see what I mean? Like, that the.
Both sides will use the term and both know that it means a specific thing. I mean, there's a lot of. There's a lot of this. In this particular issue, in this conflict.
Everybody does that. They'll use terms that they can say, well, generically speaking, this term means x, y, and z, but knowing that it has a specific connotation. So it's sort of poking each other. So I'm not singling you out for this usage. Right. But I mean, in the actual. Tease it out.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: But in the actual, there were two intifadas. The intifada one and intifada two. They were, I think, a decade apart. The first one was actually largely a nonviolent resistance. And so its implication as violence or as leading to death was not at first the way the term was used. And that sort of validates the idea that this is. It's a term like revolutions can be violent or nonviolent. That's another term that.
[00:27:18] Speaker C: Well, this is a disagreement that Dick and I have, maybe just like, I think. Well, a little bit. Just that, of course, revolutions can be both, but there are certain contexts in which people say it and either. Do you mean violence?
[00:27:33] Speaker A: No, no, I think what I'm agreeing that we need to. People need to hear what the movement itself means, and it means uprising. It means resistance. Some campuses, I don't know how expressed this is here, have taken sort of commitments to nonviolence as the. As their mode of operation. Nonviolent resistance.
[00:27:56] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: And you want to comment on that, Rosie?
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that, that, again, I can't speak for everybody in the camp, but from what I have heard from others and from my personal perspective, that is, the ethos that we're embracing is a nonviolent encampment.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: Another thing in terms of the, when we were talking about Zionism, one thing that was interesting was that you said that you could be a Zionist and not support Netanyahu. Do you think that someone could be a Zionist and be against the war in Gaza?
[00:28:30] Speaker B: What do you mean by against? Do you think against how it has? Do you mean against its start, against the retaliation that happened after October 7? Or do you mean as against what's happened now?
[00:28:44] Speaker C: I mean, like, say, at any point you could, you've been, you know, could you be a Zionist and have a political position and an analysis or, you know, in which, you know, whether it's from the very, very opening of military engagement or once you saw how it was going to turn out or whatever, you're like, you know what? I'm against this.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: I can't speak for everybody that identifies as a Zionist out there.
I think that when I talk about Zionism in the context of this movement, I talk about Zionists as people that think that Israel's acts of violence against what happened on October 7 were proportional and justified and necessary to preserve the jewish state. So in the context of this movement, that is how I think of it.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: But so you're not sure if there's people like that out there, but when.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: You use the term I haven't met one. Yeah.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Fair. I haven't met one that's fair.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: I mean, for what it's worth, I definitely have. And there definitely are folks like that. And one of the things that was interesting and one of the times pieces about the UCLA encampment was like, somebody that was interviewed said precisely that. Like, I'm totally against the Gaza war and I'm against, like, Netanyahu. I'm against, like, their, the whole, everything about, like, the policy towards the Palestinians. And so I went out there and I wanted to be involved, and it was just like, anti Zionism. Anti Zionism. And like, I'm not even that strong a Zionist. But I was like, I just don't feel like I could be part of this. And so that's what's, I know a lot of people who fit in that. And it's interesting to me to know how such a group of people are conceptualized or thought about in the movement, because Zionism, the way that you're using it and the way that I do hear it from the movement is like a stand in for a lot of things like, a Zionist supports Israel as it is. And the war, there's like, I think, a much finer gradation of opinion. Like, it's messier than that out there.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I definitely know that. And again, something that my friend taught me is that Zionism is the belief in what essentially is an ethno state, and that it is impossible for an inclusive state to exist, like, within that region that includes Palestinians, that includes non jewish people. And because the act of preserving a state that is sovereign in hosting people of a jewish identity has been a violent colonial endeavor over the course of history, that is kind of grounds to reject the ideology as a whole.
[00:31:43] Speaker C: There's a lot of discourse out there, as we've been talking about that's like, either don't listen to what anybody is saying in the movement or pick things out or pick things out that are, like, extraneous or whatever, or have had real experiences and have heard real discourse that they find anti semitic. What kinds of discussion? As you're talking about messaging, as you're talking about activities and so forth, have you sort of internalized that critique from outside, or do you engage with it or think about it, etcetera?
[00:32:18] Speaker B: The critique that the pro palestinian student movement is anti semitic.
[00:32:23] Speaker C: Yes. And then specifically. Right. The storyline, you know, that. And I. Maybe we can sort of get into the discussion about divestment and nitty gritty and legal stuff with this. Like, there's legislation, you know, at the national and state level, being cooked up to very specifically criminalize or constrain, like, the kind of activity that's going on right now in the palestinian, pro palestinian movement on campuses. Like, your movement is being targeted legislatively. And the justification for that is that it makes the campus unsafe in some way for jewish people, that it contributes to individual acts of antisemitism, and also that the rhetoric itself is anti semitic. And that's a, you know, a big freight train of operations involving the, you know, the federal level definition of antisemitism being recognized, and then specific legislation here around genocide, discussion on campus, et cetera. So our genocide calling for genocide, long winded way of saying it's coming for you. It's talked about. What do you think?
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah, two things. So, first of all, at this campus in particular, I will say I can't. I can't say if jewish people feel anti semitic in the spaces that I'm in because I'm not jewish and I don't have that perspective. But what I can say is that I have consistently seen jewish people who care deeply about their jewish identity in the activist spaces that I engage in. So jewish voice for peace did a shabbat at the encampment. Jewish voice for peace works so, so closely with students for justice in Palestine at this university. So I think that, you know, people. People have different feelings about what's safe and what's not. But there are a sizable amount of jewish students at this university who are participating in the pro palestinian activist efforts. So I think a statement that says that these movements are unsafe for jewish people is not something that you can say as a blanket statement, given the diversity of identities that exist within the activist spaces. The other thing that I think that that accusation or whatever kind of implies is this fallacy that pro palestinian voices are the dominant and powerful ones on university campuses. And here at UCSB, we've seen that that is entirely not the case just within our student government. For example, we saw a resolution to condemn Hamas. Months and months before, we saw a resolution that. What was it? What was the exact wording? I don't know, but that said that Israel was dehumanizing Palestinians. That took a long, long time, and it took a lot of fighting from pro palestinian activists to even get that symbolic form of recognition. And we've also seen pro palestinian voices being suppressed administratively and socially. So I think that this idea that pro palestinian movements are making college campuses unsafe for jewish students kind of neglects to acknowledge the powers that be on at least our college campus here at UCSB, and also neglects to see the, I guess, what they would identify as anti zionist jewish voices that are large and very important parts of these movements.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: So, yeah, I think just. You started talking about this with those slogan signs, the banners, making it clear that when there's questions raised, it seems that becomes a real topic for discussion within the group, within the encampment and so forth, about whether this can be offensive or how do we interpret it.
One of my feelings about the encampment as a form of protest is that it brings people together over a long period of time. So you can't just be mouthing slogans and chanting. You are actually discussing, thinking, studying, if you will. That's my romantic view. But I think you agree with that, right? That that's a lot of what's been happening during the encampment process, and I think not just here, but around the country, that's been true. But I don't want to deny the basic point that I understand that hasn't yet been emphasized from the pro Israel point of view. Where does that charge of antisemitism come from the fundamental, orchestrated view by the jewish establishment and by Israel, is that the student protests are really engineered by Hamas, that Hamas is determined to get rid of the Jews who live in Israel Palestine, and therefore, by that logic, the protest's meaning is anti semitic. Well, that's an orchestra. You know, that's a storyline that has been built up, and I think it's widely believed in Israel because we've talked to on the podcast and a leader of the israeli left who's basically sees the student movement as ill informed and basically supporting Hamas. And that seems to be a prevailing opinion there, even though a major newspaper in Israel, Haares, has been very fair and good about reporting that's not read by hardly anybody. So there's a limit, I would say, if I were you, to how much explanation can be done, but I really to really admire the fact that as you speak, and as I think you're speaking about a movement that is actually conscious of these issues and trying to come to grips with them and trying to get a deep understanding of all this stuff, am I being overly rosy about it? Rosie?
[00:38:24] Speaker B: I think that your description of the movement as discursive and one that doesn't hold a singular opinion is very accurate.
Don't think that my opinion aligns with everybody at the encampment. And we also do have, or our main guiding principle is that we're a horizontal structure which can pose some difficulties when it comes to organization, but it also poses the opportunity for everybody to voice concerns without any censorship or people overriding you or people saying, okay, this is enough. We've heard enough of this, because I'm the leader and I don't like this conversation. So, yeah, I think that that's been a nice part of the experience there.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: So those of us who were sixties activists, one thing that a lot of us learn to be worried about is that in the midst of strong struggle, confrontation, a kind of extremist rhetoric comes to the fore, and everyone who is not in love with that rhetoric feels intimidated or silenced. They don't want to seem unrevolutionary in the midst of revolutionary discourse. And so everyone that I know of my age gets worried about this movement. Will you follow the same path? I don't know if you have any feeling about that or sense of that.
[00:39:47] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great way to frame.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: That of not being radical enough if you don't.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
The needs that people outdo each other in their proof of how revolutionary they are, rather than in feeling the need to talk strategically, to think analytically, to talk about what. Not only what are we expressing, but what are we able to win, rather than showing off our. And performing our revolutionism.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: Does that make sense? Yeah. I hopefully don't get in trouble for this, for anybody who's in the encampment that. That hears it. But I have experienced a lot of performative leftism or performative radicalism in the encampment. We have meetings, community meetings, where anybody can speak. And I have said at least a couple or a few of them have revolved around identity politics and how that makes people more or less capable of organization or engaging in certain actions. And to me, I think that it's very important to voice concerns, especially in a movement where you have people of all different sorts of identities coming together and trying to organize. But what I would like to see and what I've voiced, so this isn't a secret. I voiced this at these community meetings, is I would like to see more solution oriented thinking when it comes to people who have marginalized identities of whatever kind, voicing concerns and complaints about whatever they have. I would really like the conversation to be solution oriented rather than a place for people to sort of repeat and bounce off each other about however radical they are or whatever.
[00:41:41] Speaker C: It's a good thing we got Rosie on now, because we're going to be like, oh, Rosie, man, Rosie was so great. We miss Rosie. What happened to Rosie?
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Oh, she brought up this issue about, no, at a meeting that won't happen.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: I mean. Yeah. And when I say identity politics, I don't want people to think it's just like race and gender or whatever. It's also like political. Identity politics.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: So that is something that I think that we could do better on. I personally think that if people have complaints that they want to voice, I would also like to hear a solution.
[00:42:16] Speaker C: Asking, especially in a group, that you make some kind of collective decisions. You know, you have a collective decision making that's, like, either total consensus or something close to that or whatever. Like, asking that people get to the point or have a proposal or whatever is like, not. I don't think that's the patriarchy or, like, whiteness. I think that's okay to want, as long as it's like, it really is. Everybody. It's not just like, oh, man, every time the people of color talk, I'm like, get to the point, you know, interrogate yourself, of course, but I'm sure you are. But, yes, we could. Everybody could benefit from that. Every community.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: I'm being given more power being conscious.
[00:42:58] Speaker C: Exactly. Including us.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: I wanted to make sure that we touch a little on the divestment demand.
I want to start by saying this, that the University of California investment is a huge fund. It's $150 billion pool of money.
It has to do with the pensions, the endowments contributions made, but also the large pension fund for all the people who have worked and work at the university.
So that is controlled not by the present of the university in Berkeley or the chancellors on the individual campuses. It's controlled entirely by the board of regents, who are the real owners of the university. Legally, that is a real problem.
That means there's no democratic accountability, and.
[00:43:49] Speaker C: The board of regents are appointed by various government leaders and officials or ex officio members, etcetera.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: So.
[00:44:00] Speaker C: And the reason one elected by the.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Students, not elected, but chosen. Education pool. Yeah, there's.
[00:44:07] Speaker C: Oh, that's right.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: So the democratic governors, incidentally, have made a point of trying to get regents who are labor leaders or others, non rich people, but petty, typical regent is a very wealthy person who is a contributor to the party whose governor is sitting in the governor's chair. And so there's a bias toward wealth. There's a bias toward, and there's possibly even corruption and self dealing over the history of the University of California for some regions, seeing a way that they can manipulate the investments in the favor of their own personal investment. So that's all part of the story. The good news for us politically is that values have entered into decision making about divestment, as you know, because as you mentioned before, the south african apartheid movement led the regents, miraculously at the time, to decide to divest from apartheid in South Africa. Interestingly enough, it was governor, republican governor Duke Magian, who favored that. He's saying that he was armenian, understood genocide from armenian history, and thought that the UC should not be part of an apartheid process.
He was running against an african american candidate for governor, Democrat was mayor of LA, Tom Bradley. So that might have been a motive. But anyway, that started a precedent. And the regents can have members who favor politically other values that get operative. So the regents recently voted something after a lot of faculty demand to divest.
[00:46:00] Speaker C: From fossil fuel and student. And student.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Student. But the fact it was important, because it's not that typical for the faculties officially to ask for divestment from fossil fuels, what they had. So the argument that used to be made is, oh, we can't have investments, have to be profit oriented. They can't be value oriented. Well, they can be both. And now we know, they can be both. So that issue, that's the good news, that there's room for values to enter into and moral considerations to enter into the process. How does that get the chancellor when he says to you guys, it's not my power to end divestment? I mean, to do divestment is truthful, legally, and it really may not be the best idea to expect him to be advocating for this because he serves at the pleasure of the regents. He can be fired on any given day by the regents. And that's not, that has happened in the past. So the real source of power here might well be more the faculty, given what happened with fossil fuels fuel. And I'm just suggesting that if there were an ability of the movement, either or both the camp folks and the UC divest people, to put together a presentation and ask that the faculty senate receive the proposal, and with the hope that they will actually design or develop a process by which such a proposal could be debated officially by the academic senate and voted upon as they did with the fossil fuel issue? That's one idea I have. In other words, people make fun of students because somebody was quoted as saying, well, our tuition gets invested in Israel. That's not the way.
That's a sign of lack of information.
However, nobody has the information because it's done by a very separate agency than the accountability processes we know. So the demand for transparency is a great demand. That's step one. Step two, how do we get serious consideration of some of divestment from. And there are two, at least two concrete reasons to divest from Israel based on international law. This is another opinion I'm going to express. One is the occupation itself, which is illegal business conducted in the occupation zone, making profit from the occupation. That's a reason to divest from those businesses because it's illegal. Second is the war crimes being committed in Gaza right now. So anyway, I'm going more than when I wanted to, just to suggest that being told by administrators, there's, you can't, there is no halt path to investment, I don't agree with. But the path that I think might work is, oddly enough, the faculty Senate, because they have representation on the regents, the academic Senate statewide, and secondly, they have the ability to meet, discuss, deliberate, debate this issue. And I think students in the past have been able to get the Senate to do that. Am I making any sense?
[00:49:26] Speaker B: Yes. I will also say that the UC regents annual meeting, I think it's the annual one, is this week in Merced, and that is also a point of focus for student activists who are calling for divestment. So, yeah, and I will also say that something that's seen as like a maybe a half victory, at least within the context of the movement here at UCSB, is what was able to be negotiated at UC Riverside, where the chancellor created a, I forget what he exactly called it, but basically a task force to come up with solutions for divestment. These are things that students have been able to do both with within the context of the UC regions. There are calls and there mass emails people are sending in to the UC regents meeting that is set for. I think it's over the course of a few days, but I think they're going to talk about investment and stuff on Wednesday.
And then there's also, like, universities are capable of dreaming up investment solutions and divestment solutions that, like you said, students don't have the capability to do because we don't have the information to do it. And both of those things are happening. And we hope that our university can be an agent in this statewide UC movement for divestment through both honest negotiations with Chancellor Yang that aren't at one in the morning when he, that was his only appearance at our encampment, and through being able to have our voices heard in public comment either through phone or through email at the UC regions meeting.
[00:51:05] Speaker C: Yeah. My sense is that students, and honestly, particularly student activist leaders at UCSB, are usually pretty dialed in on the UC power structure as something I've always been impressed with.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Yeah. But the investment thing is really mysterious.
[00:51:22] Speaker C: But everything goes to, I mean, everything is the regents. I mean, like, every fight is the regents, and even on the labor side, it's the regents and, and so forth. It's crazy.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Anyway, so listen, so we're coming close to the hour. So, Rosie, what, you get the last word? If you can think of what it might be, what would you like the message to be that you would send out to the human race tonight? Right now?
[00:51:51] Speaker B: I think that the student movement against genocide in Palestine is about a lot more than money. It is sort of about money, but it's also about what that money symbolizes. And what that money symbolizes is an acceptance of relationships with not only unethical companies because they manufacture weapons, but with an unethical power system that favors Israel by any means necessary. So what students are calling for, at least from my perspective, what I am calling for as a student who's protesting on college campuses, is I'm not just calling for divestment. I am calling for a change in powerful people's perception of public opinion. And I think that that is an equally important force that will influence policy from the UC, maybe up to Washington. So that is my personal goal in engaging with this movement. I don't think that any singular action when it comes to money is going to change what needs to be changed. But I think that the eruption of discourse about, about Israel, Palestine that has occurred as a result of the student movements has value in itself. And I'm happy to be part of that discourse, both in my participation with the movement on the ground and also in talking about it with you all and others. So, yeah, well, I think that's something.
[00:53:23] Speaker C: You should be, yeah. Exceptionally proud of.
[00:53:27] Speaker D: Oh, I am just a student, sir, and only want to learn but it's hard to read through the rise and smoke of the books that you like to burn. So I'd like to make a promise and I'd like to make a vow that when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now.
There's a time you gotta study and a time you gotta fight and a time to go to college and learn about your eyes. And you can learn it faster, slow, but learn it anyhow. That when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now.
Oh, you'd like to be my father. You'd like to be my dad.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Thanks much for being a listener with us here on talking strategy, making history. You can subscribe to our podcast by going to patreon.com Slash tsmh. We'd love to get your support. We'd love to get your comments, your reflections, your suggestions, your critiques. So please do go to that site and join in in whatever way you can.
See you next time.
