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NYU Campus Cop Cars Disabled

Earlier this week, in response to calls for escalation from our besieged comrades in Gaza, a small crew of NYU students, faculty, and staff disabled several vehicles belomg to the Office of “Campus Safety,” which worked hand-in hand with NYPD pigs to arrest, harass, and suspend students for their participation in the Gaza solidarity encampments. Punctures were quickly and quietly made in each vehicle’s tires using an awl; from start to finish, this took no longer than one minute. These simple and easily replicable acts of sabotage serve as reminders to our genocidally complicit university administration: the student intifada did not end with the Spring semester, and will only intensify until Palestinian liberation is conclusively won.

We encourage our fellow NYU affiliates, and the Gaza solidarity movements on campuse across the country, to make divestment our bare minimum demand–we must continue our struggle until reparations for the violence already inflicted have been issued, and the university structure that awards governing poer to an unaccountable Board of Trustees (or Governors, or Regents, etc.) in the first place is completely overturned. We know that senior university administrators, as the morally deadened foot soldiers of whatever capitalist-dominated Board they report to, will never agree to fully divest from Zionist genocide and apartheid. Doing so would subject university investments to some semblance of democratic control, which the governing Boards, as a matter of pure self-preservation, will quite simply never allow. To win any of our demands that matter, then, we must first abolish the current structure of the university itself, and build in its place systems of higher education that reject the endowment/donor model altogether. In this vein, the movement of many of the encampments towards “People’s Universities” is one that should be closely studied and built upon.

Until this world is won, our resistance will escalate. If you want to take direct action but aren’t sure how, find friends who feel the same way, and study the basics of action planning and operational security together:

What/how many roles will this require?

How do we all communicate securely?

Is jail support in place? What kind of scouting will be necessary?

Which tools will we need, and how do we use them?

Start with low-risk mischief–tagging, wheatpasting, smashing, and slashing–to build the skills, confidence, and trust necessary for higher-impact actions. Study tactics from other movements, zines, communiques, and other sources both on- and off-line. Act bravely and carefully, and keep acting until the Zionist entity and Amerikan empire protecting it finally fall.

In rage and solidarity,

Xx

Found on Social Media [Twitter link: https://x.com/taliaotg/status/1797361503659602245]

ALERT: Adams debuts plan to build new training facility for NYC’s various public safety agencies

New York City will build a new facility on the NYPD Academy campus where several city agencies with public safety functions outside of the police department will begin training their new recruits, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Friday.

Hizzoner announced the new “Public Safety Academy” during a promotional ceremony at the NYPD Academy campus in College Point, Queens on May 31. He said it aims to better coordinate operations across separate city agencies with enforcement arms while saving the city money by consolidating their training into one facility.

“We were so disjointed because of the color of our uniform or what our patches stated, instead of realizing we were one team,” Adams said. “Even if there were different jerseys, we were team public safety. Today, the announcement of this public safety campus is bringing all of that experience together.”

Those that will move their training to the new facility span from more traditional law enforcement agencies like the Departments of Correction and Probation to parts of the city’s government with border missions like the Departments of Sanitation and Parks. Currently, all of those agencies outside the NYPD have their own separate smaller training centers.

“We will learn from the Department of Correction and how they’re able to identify gang behavior within their walls,” the mayor said. “We will learn from Sue Donoghue, the commissioner of Parks Police, as they look at what is taking place on our parks and other green spaces … This is how you build a law enforcement apparatus that we can respond to the crises that we know are important for us to face day to day.”

The city is set to break ground on the new facility in 2026, with construction expected to wrap in early 2030, according to the mayor’s office. 

The academy will be funded in part by $225 million earmarked in 2021 for a new DOC training facility, City Hall said. The campus will include both the training spaces specifically for the Corrections Department and multipurpose facilities that will be shared by over a dozen other city agencies.

The campus is part of a broader effort by the Adams administration to bring separate city agencies with public safety functions under one umbrella.

The facility’s development has been driven primarily by Adams’ Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks, who has spent much of his two and half years in office working on it, according to a report from [mainstream news source]. The paper reported that Banks hopes the academy will be a model for other cities across the country.

Found on Mainstream Media

REVOLT FOR RAFAH: New Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia

BREAKING: WE ARE BACK A GROUP OF PALESTINIAN STUDENTS SUPPORT BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY APARTHEID DIVEST HAVE ESTABLISHED A NEW ENCAMPMENT AMID COLUMBIA COLLEGE'S ALUMNI REUNIION. REVOLT 4 RAFAH REVOLT 4 RAFAH REVOLT 4 RAFAH

REVOLT FOR RAFAH:

Join Palestinian students, supported by the wider community at Columbia, at a the new Gaza Solidarity Encampment. We are outraged by Columbia’s complicity in the killing of our people in Gaza, and most recently the massacre in Rafah. We are equally outraged by Columbia’s use of brute force and their capitulation to the Billionaire’s lobby, instead of to the “safety of the students”. We will resist, until Columbia divests.

The action will coincide with Columbia’s Alumni Reunion. We want to make it clear to Columbia Alumni to cease donating to Columbia until they meet our demands.

This will be an action of community building and political education. Programming will include teach-ins, film screenings, art builds, open mics and talks with Palestinians in Gaza and Palestine. Food and cold refreshments will be available.

Until Palestine is free, from the river to the sea.

Reposted from Columbia Encampment on Telegram

 

Article from the Columbia Spectator (student newspaper):

Pro-Palestinian protesters repitch encampment on South Lawn during annual alumni reunion

Friday’s encampment comes over a month after protesters first occupied the east side of South Lawn on April 17.

By Heather Chen / Columbia Daily Spectator
The Morningside Heights campus remains open only to Columbia ID holders.

Continue reading “REVOLT FOR RAFAH: New Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia”

Autonomous Activists De-Occupy Brooklyn Museum

May 31

Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters have stormed into the Brooklyn Museum, breaking through barricades, pushing staff out and occupying the building.

See video on Telegram

 

Story from mainstream media:

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators swarmed the Brooklyn Museum and dozens were arrested Friday.

The New York City Police Department said 34 people were taken into custody.

The protests started around 4 p.m. in Fort Greene, where hundreds gathered to march near the Barclays Center.

Protesters made their way to the Brooklyn Museum around 30 minutes later. Video shows museum employees rushing to lock the doors as they approached.

Some protesters even scaled the building and unfurled a giant banner from the roof reading, “Free Palestine. Divest from genocide.”

A pro-Palestinian demonstrator, upper left, hangs a flag on top of the Brooklyn Museum during a protest demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, Friday, May 31, 2024, in New York.

Brooklyn Museum officials said they did not call the NYPD, but police arrived on the scene and clashed with demonstrators before making arrests.

The museum said in a statement to CBS New York that existing and newly installed artwork on their plaza was damaged, and members of the museum’s public safety staff were physically and verbally harassed as protesters entered.

The museum closed an hour early out of concern for the safety of the building, its collections and staff.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators wave flags over the Brooklyn Museum during a protest demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza on Friday, May 31, 2024, in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

Police said the group behind the demonstration [Within Our Lifetime] has organized several others, including one near the Met Gala in May.

The demonstration came on the same day President Joe Biden said Israel offered a new cease-fire proposal, and as Israel continues its push further into the Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.

The protest also came ahead of the 60th annual Israel Day on Fifth Parade on Sunday. An internal threat assessment obtained by CBS New York said the event may be “an attractive target for an act of mass violence or disruption.”

Israel continues to face mounting international criticism over Palestinian deaths and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.