Mass Protests and Direct Actions in Solidarity With Palestine Grow into Student Occupations and Blockades

photo: Ash Agony on X/Twitter / Support Here

Direct actions, mass demonstrations, and increasingly, disruptive protests in support of occupied Palestine and to demand an immediate ceasefire by the US backed Israeli state have continued unabated and in many areas, have intensified. While mass marches and protests in many cities have continued, the movement has also expanded into direct action campaigns targeting weapons contractors and corporations, student occupations of university buildings, and disruptive protests and blockades.

Over the past week, thousands marched and blockaded delegates in San Francisco, during Biden’s recent visit during the APEC conference; actions which culminated in protesters blockading the bay bridge for hours. In Washington DC, police injured reportedly up to 90 people when they attempted to stop protesters from locking arms in front of a DNC meeting, while in Sacramento, California, another meeting by Democrats was disrupted, “taken over,” and shut down by protesters who held a sit-in and demanded an end to the US backed war. In Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and Chicago, thousands marched, blocked streets, targeted businesses directly helping to fund the war, and in some cases, pushed passed police to shutdown roadways.

Meanwhile, student protests on college campuses are upping the ante. Occupations of an administrative building have occurred at the University of Michigan, Occidental College in Los Angeles, and a hall at Harvard in Cambridge, MA, while walkouts and protests organized by pro-Palestinian students across the US have continued.

Direct actions and claimed acts of sabotage also continue to take place across the US. A claim of responsibility posted to Indybay and other websites, claimed credit for helping to shut down a fundraiser for the IDF in San Francisco, California. From the communique:

Despite reports and appearances otherwise, this fundraiser was effectively shut down within the first hour. Donor attendees began hurriedly leaving in a steady stream at the start of what was planned to be a full evening of blood money raising. This disruption, however, was not achieved by the tame, above-ground rally being safely contained by both the police and the rally organizers themselves, at a far distance from the unbothered attendees. These symbolic and futile attempts to shame and appeal to the moral conscience of individuals who have no shame or conscience, will always fail.

You cannot do damage to the Zionist project by merely engaging with its facade; you must strike at its soulless heart. You must strike at its veins (supply chains, logistics, cash flows, infrastructure).

While the liberals were congratulating themselves for having their nonthreatening photo op parade out in front of the gala, our people were out of sight at work on the veins of the building. Palestinians have suffered decades of Israeli soldiers and settlers restricting and destroying their access to water, often bricking up or concreting any water source not directly under strict control of the occupation forces, cutting off Palestinian access to the Jordan River while draining it to near extinction for settlement mono-crop agriculture, shooting holes in Palestinian water towers, bombing Gazan water treatment facilities, poisoning Palestinian springs and enforcing water apartheid in order to exert total control over Palestinian life. We decided to give these Zionist bootlickers a taste of their own medicine.

We cracked open the water main for the building housing the gala, switched it off, and filled the box with fresh concrete. This form of sabotage is quick and incredibly easy to replicate, and the tools are quite cheap. It also renders the building in question completely uninhabitable and unusable. We had a good laugh imagining these fascist motherfuckers driven out of the gala by the stench of overflowing toilets, unable to raise any more money for genocide. As we did we were reminded of how Israeli settlers flood Palestinian olive groves with sewage, poisoning food sources, destroying livelihoods.

On November 9th, Elbit Systems, a weapons contractor, was vandalized in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. On November 12th in Bloomington, Indiana, a military recruiting station was sabotaged in solidarity with Palestine. Banner drops and graffiti campaigns also took place across the United States in the bay area and in Philadelphia.