What Started Here

by Sara Bawany

for the demonstrators beaten and arrested by police at the two UT Austin student-led protests calling for the university to divest from companies linked to Israel’s 75+ year genocide against Palestinians, April 2024

In the aftermath, a viral photo shows a line of cops in riot gear. Beside 

them, a big orange sign with a slogan many of you likely heard 

at orientation – “What starts here changes the world.” The Tower’s 

shadow loomed like a vulture, overlooking demonstrators brutalized 

in broad daylight on South Mall. The backdrop of batons and stun 

guns comical against bright green grass. Heads smacked into concrete 

by those claiming to protect and serve. A wheelchair, tossed aside like 

litter, its inhabitant thrown to the ground. It was April, and nearby, 

pomegranate trees were flowering on campus. In the center of it all, 

where students would celebrate graduation a month later, the assault 

on free speech. You could say this is where it started, but that would 

be hyperbole. Older now, I can see the Tower from my window 

the same way I did at 18. Still a symbol of possibility, but the kind 

where overpaid adults have the gall to attack unarmed teenagers, 

alumni, those against tuition dollars saturated in Gaza’s blood. The 

price of becoming critical thinkers, beaten when demonstrating 

a mastery of learning outcomes. Outside agitators did this, it was said. 

And isn’t the university environment ripe for that kind of rhetoric. 

Isn’t violence just business after all, the kind we’d watched across 

our screens for the last six months, and before that. And before 

that. Your bravery was your weapon, the willingness to go on 

stamped as exile, as suspended, unable to live in resolute oblivion 

just trying to get to class, just trying to mind your own business. 

There were others, arms locked with chins defiantly lifted, journalists 

tackled for doing their job. (Sometimes, the irony writes itself.) 

Later, the rest of us waited outside the jail, distant slamming on your

windows several stories up in rhythm with our chanting all night 

until voices ran hoarse. As you all trickled out over many hours, 

mockingly bowing or dancing, eyes rimmed red, the marks of zip 

ties still on your wrists but keffiyehs proudly in place, we celebrated 

an inevitable freedom, joyful for the day’s heroes. History will remember 

you kindly, and we’ll make sure of it. Guess you just had to be there.