De Paul. Chicago's last university encampment standing and Biden's loss of the youth vote.
About three miles east of me is Chicago’s DePaul University where the city’s last Gaza encampment still remains in place as of this morning.
In fact it has grown larger each day since it was erected over a week ago.
Encampments at the School of the Art Institute and the University of Chicago have had their tents torn down by orders of their administrations.
Chicago police presented a possible preview of the Democratic Convention when they roughed up and arrested students at the SAIC. U of C did the same using their campus police.
Northwestern’s encampment came down after negotiations between the protesters and the university.
But DePaul’s administration declared an impasse in talks to divest university endowment from Israel.
“Honestly, you would think it would feel good, but it feels really sad,” Ayesh said. “… We’ve obviously worked with a lot of other organizers at other schools, a lot of them actually helped us put ours together.”
According to Ayesh, organizers of DePaul’s encampment have anticipated the possibility of a police raid or arrests. She said that in any scenario, demonstrators want to embody what she calls the “resilience and resistance” of the Palestinian people.
“So far, (university officials) haven’t given us any indication that they want to shut down our encampment,” Ayesh said. “I think if they did call police, it would look bad on them.” The Depaulia
That may be an optimistic view as I’ve heard other reports that DePaul’s administration has plans to break up the encampment, maybe as soon as early this week.
The Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel organizations have slandered the encampments calling them antisemitic in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
The ADL has referred to “discomfort” that some Jewish students feel even though all the Chicago encampments have had participation by individual Jewish students and Jewish organizations.
In an era when everyone carries a camera on their smart phone, I haven’t seen one video of campus protesters using antisemitic slurs or engaging in any antisemitic activity at the Chicago campuses.
They have all had a clear Jewish presence, including the ecumenical observance of Passover.
Meanwhile a New York Times/Siena poll out this morning demonstrates the impact of Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza is having on the November election.
Biden is hemorrhaging non-white and young votes according to to the poll on a host of issues, support for Israel being among the most prominent.
Around 13 percent of the voters who say they voted for Mr. Biden last time, but do not plan to do so again, said that his foreign policy or the war in Gaza was the most important issue to their vote.